At the end of the two days of testing that the Superbikes have just completed on the Catalunya–Barcelona circuit, there are at least two ways to judge Scott Redding's performance in comparison to that of reigning champion Jonathan Rea.
Either we can only note that the latter has once again proven to be the fastest and, consequently, envisage yet another season dominated by the Irishman's Kawasaki, or we will notice that the spearhead of Ducati has proved to be the fastest during the two afternoons which took place with temperatures of 30° in the air and 42° on the ground, thus auguring a good performance on the Jerez circuit, venue of the next official confrontation on August 2 .
Deliberately wanting to be optimistic, we will hide the various small technical problems which temporarily immobilized the Panigale V4 R on the Granollers track during these two days of testing...
The battle announced in Jerez between the two men therefore promises to be all the more interesting as Scott Redding in a sense puts Jonathan Rea's supremacy into perspective...
Scott Redding : " It was fun. Johnny used five new tires, while after using three I told my team that it was ridiculous. He rode first with the normal racing tire, then twice with the soft tire for the sprint races, and then used two qualifying tires. Every time I went out, I was faster than him, then he would take a new tire and go against me. It made things spicy, but I knew eventually one of us would fall because we were getting faster and faster. So I remembered that my goal was to improve on the distance in warm weather. »
“The Ducati and Kawasaki are Great good bikes. There are also some good drivers on it. We have proven that we can do fast times on a bike that is not as fast as a MotoGP. Okay, we have different tires, but I ran 1'40.9 on normal racing tires. Our lap times were fast, although I still had three tenths of a second under the grip. I didn't use the qualifying tire to the limit because I'm still learning how it works. And also, because it's scary to drive at the limit like that. »
Looking forward to August 2!
Combined results of the 2 days:
| 1 | 1 | Jonathan Rhea | Kawasaki | 1'41.910 | 1'40.450 |
| 2 | 45 | Scott Redding | Ducati | 1'41.727 | 1'40.606 |
| 3 | 66 | Tom Sykes | BMW | 1'42.455 | 1'40.956 |
| 4 | 22 | alex lowes | Kawasaki | 1'42.318 | 1'41.137 |
| 5 | 54 | Toprak Razgatlioglu | Yamaha | 1'42.771 | 1'41.218 |
| 6 | 50 | Eugene Laverty | BMW | 1'42.832 | 1'41.494 |
| 7 | 60 | Michael van der Mark | Yamaha | 1'42.975 | 1'41.679 |
| 8 | 76 | Loris Baz | Yamaha | 1'41.980 | 1'41.881 |
| 9 | 7 | Chaz Davies | Ducati | 1'42.641 |
1'41.903 |
| 10 | 36 | Leander Market | Ducati | 1'42.997 |
1'42.024 |
| 11 | 31 | Garrett gerloff | Yamaha | 1'43.119 | 1'42.121 |
| 12 | 91 | Leon Haslam | Honda | 1'42.996 |
1'42.126 |
| 13 | 11 | Sandra Cortese | Kawasaki | 1'42.573 |
1'42.187 |
| 14 | 19 | Alvaro Bautista | Honda | 1'42.320 | 1'43.261 |
| 15 | 64 | Federico Caricasulo | Yamaha | 1'43.535 | 1'42.333 |
| 16 | 77 | Maximilian Scheib | Kawasaki | 1'43.568 |
1'42.436 |
| 17 | 20 | Sylvain Barrier | Ducati | 1'44.430 | 1'44.323 |
Photo credit: Worldsbk.com
