Kawasaki Racing Team riders Jonathan Rea and Tom Sykes were second and fourth respectively on the time sheets after the first day of a two-day test at Phillip Island in Australia as they made their early preparations for the first round of the year next Sunday.

Despite a host of changes to the technical rules this season the top riders’ lap times were similar with the previous configuration of more powerful Superbike machinery after only a single day on track, with more improvements still possible tomorrow.

Today Rea set a 1’31.663 in the morning session while Sykes posted a 1’31.753 in the afternoon.

A red flag just before the end of the afternoon session lost all the riders some track time but there was a final ten-minute period of action, which saw Rea displaced from his previous leading position, despite not going for an all-out lap time at this stage.

The official Ninja ZX-10R riders will have just one more day of testing to complete before the season begins in earnest, with the first practice sessions for the opening round being held on Friday 20th February.

Jonathan Rea: “We were working set-up for this track because I have not had the chance to ride the Ninja ZX-10R here before. We just arrived with our Jerez set-up, something we knew, but the set-up for this track is quite different. We got an understanding of the bike again and everything still feels quite new. We changed the balance and everything is going in the right way. We have not been thinking of lap times and when I put a new tyre in this afternoon we were not able to give it a good go. We have been consistent in both sessions and I was one of the fastest guys toward the end, until the session got red flagged. Then everybody went out again on new tyres for the last ten minutes.”

Tom Sykes: “Today has been productive and we have been working in the right direction. We set an acceptable lap time and we were just working on some parameters of the Ninja ZX-10R, getting rid of some variables before we arrive in the race weekend. At the moment we are relatively happy and very relaxed. It is quite windy and that definitely has some influence on the handling of the bike, but it is always the same here in Pi. That has given us something to consider for race weekend but it is the same for everybody. For the position in terms of lap times I am happy enough. We used very minimal numbers of tyres and concentrated on our set-up, continuing on from our winter test plan.”