Jonathan Rea Makes The Final Preparation For His WorldSBK Title Defence

Jonathan Rea and the Kawasaki Racing Team will start their defence of the WorldSBK title in earnest this week at the popular Phillip Island circuit.  The WorldSBK teams have made the long journey from Europe to Australia and will undergo two days of testing to finalise machine set-up before the reds lights go out to begin the 2016 season next weekend.

Rea and team-mate Tom Sykes will contest the championship with the all new 2016 Ninja ZX-10R.  Over the winter months the Kawasaki duo have completed a substantial testing program with the new machine at the Spanish circuits of Motorland Aragon and Jerez.  The final test at Motorland was curtailed slightly due to cold weather and low track temperatures.  The next two days, therefore, will be invaluable in finalising set-up options for the coming weekend's race.

Rea arrived in Phillip Island last week, straight from the KRT presentation in Barcelona.  It has given him time to relax with his family and friends in Phillip Island and get acclimatised to the change in time-zone and weather from the European winter.

Testing will begin on Monday morning and will continue through until Tuesday afternoon.  There will be a break in action on Wednesday with pre-event media duties on Thursday. The season kicks off for real with Free Practice on Friday 26th February.

Jonathan Rea stated: “I am really excited for the start of the season because it has been a long winter with a lot of testing. Now we can start putting all the pieces of the jigsaw together to start making our race package. We are really happy because the bike is at a very good level and we have had some good tests. We have had some more time on the dyno to perfect our engine mapping. All the major test items we have tried are underlined now and we can start focusing on performance. We will make a race simulation at some point and adjust the bike for a race set-up. We also need to start to be more specific with electronics. We will try to use the smile-a-mile philosophy and enjoy it too.”