WINTER WELCOME FOR PATA PROMETEON YAMAHA IN ASSEN FREE PRACTICE
Jonathan Rea layered up and got to work on the opening day of the third round of the 2024 FIM Superbike World Championship at the chilly TT Circuit Assen in the Netherlands today.
Constantly changing conditions throughout the day, with strong winds and icy-cold rain showers, made preparations challenging for the full WorldSBK field during the two allotted 45-minute Free Practice sessions.
Despite completing just 18 laps in total, Rea finished the day in fifth place and less than a tenth from the top three positions, as he found a good feeling with his Yamaha R1 WorldSBK in a small dry window of opportunity this afternoon.
As the forecast looks colder still for the first race day in Assen tomorrow, with temperatures unlikely to reach double digits and rain showers predicted throughout, Jonathan will be looking to improve to be able to battle for the podium in the main points paying races. Free Practice 3 will get underway at 9:00 CEST (BST+1) before Superpole qualifying at 11:00 and Race 1 at 14:00.
Jonathan Rea: P5 – 1'35.922
“The conditions today have been not ideal for setting up the bike. We never really had a full dry circuit, in Free Practice 2 it was a bit better in the beginning but with really strong gusts of wind. Every circuit I’m coming to this year, I still feel like I’m re-learning it with the Yamaha R1 WorldSBK but here in Assen I had a positive feeling straight away. I felt like it was quite easy to get to a quick lap time but to keep improving became more difficult especially with the changing conditions. We haven’t done many dry laps but everyone is in the same boat, so tomorrow we have to look at what the weather forecast is. Fortunately, we were able to get out at the end of FP2 just to check the wet set-up to give the guys some more information, as I haven’t spent a lot of time on the bike in wet conditions. I think we can make a good step with our set-up from that. The key of tomorrow will be weather and tyre choice, but today we only used one set of wet and one set of dry tyres so we didn’t get much tyre testing done.”