Jonathan Rea Heads For Testing At The Home Of KRT

The Catalunya based Kawasaki Racing Team will make its final major step to restarting the WorldSBK season with a two day test at the Montmeló circuit, located less than a kilometre from their headquarters in Granollers, near Barcelona. Testing will take place between the eighth and ninth of July and will also feature many of the championship’s main competitors.

Five times WorldSBK champion Jonathan Rea has already ridden his Ninja ZX-10RR machine at Montmeló during a short but important test session in late January. The 4.627km long circuit has been a regular host to MotoGP events for many years but this season it will feature a WorldSBK race weekend for the very first time.

Jonathan and the team started their journey back into the 2020 season overall with a two-day test at Misano in Italy last month, finding positives to take into the forthcoming tests at Montmeló.

The Montmeló test will be a particularly important one as it is the final full WorldSBK track session for the team before they relocate to Andalusia for the restart of the 2020 season. The first of four races to be held in relatively quick succession in Iberia will begin at Jerez de la Frontera, with racedays scheduled for Saturday 1st and Sunday 2nd August.

Jonathan Rea, stated: “I have been enjoying ‘van life’ and I stayed out in Misano after the test. I have been pretty much cycling around Italy with Fabien Foret and my mate Gaz for a good few days, in the campground I often stay at in Misano while observing social distancing. I have been cycling a lot, basically smashing the pedals. I also stopped off at Andrew Pitt’s place in Lucca. He is an old team-mate of mine and when he retired I ended up staying at his place for a couple of months a few years ago. It was good to be able to hit the roads on the bicycle that I used to ride there in the Tuscan hills. At Fabien’s we also did a bit of riding with Regis Laconi – even though we cycled at the correct distance from each other he definitely knows how to pedal a bicycle, I will tell you that much! So I have been full gas training since Misano. Thinking about Lockdown as an athlete, it was a strange period. We did not know when we would ride the racebike again so having no fixed date I was just trying to brush up with things I have struggled with in the past, like flexibility, and try to drop a couple of kilos safely, which managed to do. I feel in really good place and I am just trying to take my foot off the gas a little bit now because it is coming up to crunch time. We will go to Montmelo for testing now. It is super-fast and flowing and really suits my natural style. We got an afternoon there at the start of the season to do our team video shoot and I enjoyed the place. Now we will get to ride the track with all our main competitors. We were right in the mix testing at Misano, as far as lap time and consistency goes. I started feeling good with the bike again and I left there feeling great. Feeling comfortable with the bike before we go to Jerez for the race weekend will be the most important thing.”