Back To The Track For JR

Double FIM Superbike World Champion Jonathan Rea will return to action this week at Circuito de Jerez where he and the Kawasaki Racing Team will resume testing with the 2017 Ninja ZX-10RR race machine ahead of the new WorldSBK season.

Jonathan will arrive back in Europe after spending several weeks in Australia with his family.

Having enjoyed the sunshine of Phillip Island and in Bright, Victoria during the Christmas and New Year holidays, Rea is more than ready to get back on track.

Taking advantage of the warm weather after New Year, Rea got down to the serious business of his physical preparations for the season ahead.  Training most days, he is now more than ready to start the season in perfect condition.

This week will see Rea and the KRT squad back at Jerez where they last tested back in November.  It will be another opportunity to put crucial development miles on the Ninja ZX-10RR, which is new for 2017 and has been prepared to the revised technical regulations in WorldSBK. 

At the test in November Jonathan posted a number of impressively quick laps but is under no illusion that there is still a lot of hard work to be done to make sure that both he and the race machine are ready for the first round of the Championship back in Phillip Island in just over a month’s time.

KME PR Quote

Jonathan Rea, stated: “We have almost completed our winter test programme at Jerez after the last test there. We can start 2017 with a base package that we are already satisfied with. We are now starting to put all the pieces of the jigsaw together so I can start to build a package looking toward the first round of the championship at Phillip Island. Jerez is a track that presents different challenges at different times of the year, depending on the temperature and grip levels from the track, so we will have to see what the track surface presents to us when we arrive there. The first test of 2017 is about getting up to speed, blowing away the winter cobwebs and starting to work with my teams again to build up to Phillip Island. We have six days of testing before the first race weekend, so we have enough time to prepare. We have some new parts we are going to evaluate in the search for more power. After the last test we left Jerez very optimistic that we had done a good job both in lap times and consistency so I’m excited to continue our work here.”