Due to restrictions on the number of testing days each rider can use over a season, Rea and Alex only rode in the second and final day of the Motorland Aragon private tests. The team itself worked on both days, however, as regular test rider Florian Marino and full-time Kawasaki WorldSSP rider for the MTM squad, Adrian Huertas, took part in the first day of testing in Tuesday 29 August.
With just one day on track for Alex and Jonathan it was important to keep to their pre-test plans and schedules, as well as getting up to racing speed after a long summer break that began after the Autodrom Most round at the end of July. The WorldSBK race season restarts relatively soon and there will also be a round at Motorland Aragon itself, near the end of September.
While Rea mostly worked on overall set-up and performance items, Lowes concentrated on some potential new items for next season after Marino had first evaluated them on the opening day. Rea set a best lap of 1’49.101 and Lowes a 1’49.791.
Warm but not fiercely hot track conditions provided a good opportunity for all the riders to make consistent evaluations of their machine set-ups. As this was not an official race weekend the riders were able to have more than one machine in their pit boxes, which helped speed up the process of back-to-back set-up comparisons.
Adrian Huertas rode at Motorland as recognition of his recent performances in WorldSSP and winning the WorldSSP3000 championship on a Kawasaki in 2021. The 20-year-old Spaniard set some strong lap times in his first test on an official KRT Superbike machine. He set a personal best of 1’51.044s, which placed him sixth overall on day one - the only day he was on track on the official Ninja ZX-10RR. Adrian rode for 79 laps in all.
Florian Marino, the team’s regular test rider, continued his valuable on-track development role, setting a personal best lap time of 1’51.689 in the process.
Next up for Rea and Lowes will be the ninth round of the championship itself, to be held at Magny Cours in France between 8 - 10 September.
Jonathan Rea, stated: “It has been a positive day and I really enjoyed riding the bike again, especially after a long time away. I was surprised how fast I was able to be on the first lap, already inside the 1’50 bracket. That set the tone for the rest of the test as we were able to try some things that we will see for sure in the Motorland Round; some fine tuning. More or less this day was geared towards a performance test, trying to understand our potential. We have been consistently fast with race tyres and also at the end we tried a qualifying tyre. We were quite competitive with our lap times today, both on race rubber and qualifying rubber. I leave the test with optimism that we can have a really positive weekend in Magny Cours. Thanks to the team for all the effort to get here during the summer and it will set us at a good rhythm for the rest of the year.”
Alex Lowes, stated: “It is really nice to be back on the Ninja ZX-10RR after the summer break. I had a lot on my test schedule. I actually had three bikes in the morning, trying different set ups and a few things for 2024. Some were quite positive and some not so positive - which is completely normal when we are testing new items. It is more mentally tiring than physically tiring, because you are really trying to think about the good points and the bad points. You want to make the right decisions now, so that it can help us next year. I did 91 laps today, which is a decent amount to get me back into the swing of things before Magny Cours. I did a little bit of a run at the end of the test on my 2023 base bike that I will be riding next week at Magny Cours just to get back into the swing of that.”
Pere Riba, Crew Chief for Jonathan Rea, stated: “The plan in this test with Johnny was to find the base set-up we will use for race weekend, which is only a couple of weeks away. We worked calmly and made two different bike set-ups to understand which one to use. We evaluated the differences and we found one direction for the best set-up. This is the job we wanted to do. We also tried a few small new items and collected information about them. In the end Johnny made the fastest lap time which gives us good confidence. We are ready for the races.”
Marcel Duinker, Crew Chief for Alex Lowes, stated: “The test was all in favour of next season. We have worked hard over the last couple of months to prepare for this test and we brought some upgrades on the bike. On the first day with Florian we had a shakedown of every single bit. Step-by-step with this new material we improved the bike. Florian was really in the mix and as a test rider he was in between the WorldSBK riders, so this was very pleasing. With Alex we followed more or less the same test plan on day two. A few items we had on the first day list we took off, as with Alex the plan was to make more laps on every single bit to understand not only the initial performance but also the performance over a longer distance. We are pleased with the results and we gathered a lot of information. We have two months before we enter the winter tests so we can make some changes here and there to these upgraded materials, but we are happy with the results of this test and things worked out as we expected. Next week we will be heading to Magny Cours and we are looking forward to it.”
Adrian Huertas, stated: “This is a much more powerful bike than the one I am used to riding. It is an awesome bike, an incredible experience and I enjoyed it a lot. It has a lot of power which felt really, really good. That is good for me. It was very different to ride a Superbike but I worked together with the team and they taught me how to improve a little bit. I have also taken some good experience to help me on the 600. I think this will be very helpful and this is like an extra motivation now. I think when I arrive in Magny Cours for WorldSSP I can fight for the victory. I want to thank all the team for this opportunity.”
2023 KRT Rider WorldSBK Statistics
Jonathan Rea: World Champion 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019 & 2020
2023: Races 24, Wins 1, Podiums 11, Superpoles 1
Career Race Wins: 119 (104 for Kawasaki)
Career Podiums: 256 (214 for Kawasaki)
Career Poles: 41 (37 for Kawasaki)
Alex Lowes:
2023: Races: 24, Wins 0, Podiums 1, Superpoles 0
Career Race Wins: 2 (1 for Kawasaki)
Career Podiums: 34 (14 for Kawasaki)
Career Poles: 1 (0 for Kawasaki)
8 x Riders’ Championships (Scott Russell 1993, Tom Sykes 2013, Rea 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019 & 2020), 1 x EVO Riders’ Championship (David Salom 2014)
6 x Manufacturers’ Championships (Ninja ZX-10R 2015 & 2016, Ninja ZX-10RR 2017, 2018, 2019 and 2020)
5 x Teams’ Championships (KRT/Provec Racing 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018 & 2019)
Kawasaki FIM Superbike World Championship Statistics
Total Kawasaki Race Wins: 178 – second overall
Total Kawasaki Podiums: 535 – second overall
Total Kawasaki Poles: 106 – second overall
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