Jonathan Rea (Kawasaki Racing Team WorldSBK) edged out Michael Ruben Rinaldi (Aruba.it Racing) by 0.073 seconds in FP2. Rea led FP1 one and continued that form in the second session of the day. He was fastest overall in the combined sessions. Res had the following words after the session.
Jonathan Rea (Kawasaki Racing Team Rider): “The guys did a good job and my first lap was a 1’37.6. With new tires the bike felt really good and I was able to get to a strong rhythm. We had a really positive FP1, then in FP2 I felt like the track temperature went higher and I was expecting to stop the bike better, especially in the hairpin. I couldn’t stop in the last part of braking. They changed the front chassis position, but in reality I really struggled on the side of the tire, during turning and in trail braking.”
Rea Continued
“I lost some confidence, so although there were a lot of red flags that actually helped as Pere and the team had time to go back to the FP1 set-up. Even with quite a few laps on the tires I was able to improve. I think the race options are quite clear for us. But we still need to improve the trail braking feeling and have more front confidence. I don’t know if we can say that we have fixed the issues we had with overloading the front at the start of the year, but certainly in these conditions of 50°C on the track we found that the front tire consumption wasn’t as bad as we experienced at the beginning of the season.”
The session saw two red flags. Xavi Vierge (Team HRC) had a viscous high side which brought out the first. The second was because of an engine issue for Dominique Aegerter (GYTR GRT Yamaha WorldSBK Team), leaving fluid on the track. Saturday action get started at
Full FP2 Results are Below