WSB: The sun comes out at the Jerez test

Following a Wednesday which could only be described as ‘miserable’ weather-wise, the sun is now shining in Jerez for the second and final day of this week’s World Superbike test. With the good weather has come a flurry of track activity.

Just after 4pm and with two hours to go, World Champion Jonathan Rea heads the superbike timesheets on an impressive lap time of 1:39.160 on a race tyre; this is 1.5 seconds quicker than his own race lap record from 2017. He sits behind only Stefan Bradl, who is at the same circuit testing an HRC MotoGP bike.

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Second in the WorldSBK ranks is Yamaha’s Alex Lowes, showing good speed, while the rest of the top five is made up of Puccetti Kawasaki’s Toprak Razgatlioglu, Ducati’s Alvaro Bautista and Kawasaki’s Leon Haslam. The BMWs of Tom Sykes and Markus Reiterberger continue to run without transponders, thus lap times are officially unknown, although their times appear competitive according to various journalists who are timing the runs trackside.

The big story is the Thursday absence of Chaz Davies. The Welshman is yet to ride his Ducati VR4 today following a crash at Turn 5 just after 4pm on Wednesday. MCN has learned that this was a lowside in the second part of the corner and the team has explained that the Welshman has been treated with a back massage. It remains uncertain as to whether he will ride today.

Sandro Cortese suffered his first Superbike crash earlier on, losing the front end of his GRT Yamaha after riding the kerbs on entry to the final corner. Just minutes later, Tom Sykes did a similar thing. In an attempt to hold onto the BMW, he was flicked over the handlebars; red flags came out after the S1000RR dug into the gravel, became airborne, pierced the catch fencing and landed on the service road.

The chequered flag will be out at 6pm local time (GMT +1).

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