Work to do for Sykes and Rea

After two days of testing at Motorland Aragon Tom Sykes and new KRT riding partner Jonathan Rea had tough introductions to the world of 2015 technical regulation changes.

The new spec of official Ninja ZX-10R engine appears to have lost some of its top end performance, a factor that Sykes noticed as soon as he took the bike on track for the first lap.

The first Monday morning of the test was wet to start, robbing Sykes of some early laps but in all he set just over 100 laps over two days.  By necessity he worked on his bike set-up and new parts more than aiming for laps times like he normally would. “We did not push the boat out this test. It is far too early,” confirmed the 2013 champion. Sykes used the same medium tyre options throughout the tests.

Just to add to the complications in judging the performance of the new bike, because Dorna will use the MotoGP layout at Aragon for the next WSB round the riders had to use that version during the tests for the first time. Completely direct comparisons of 2014 season lap times were therefore impossible but Sykes made a best of 1’51.2 and new KRT rider Jonathan Rea put in a 1’51.1.

Rea fell on day two, without injury, but lost some time as his machine was repaired. He did around 40 laps per day as his new team tried to refine a set-up for him on his new bike, having spent his entire WSB career to date on Honda machinery.

Both Sykes and Rea will be out at Jerez testing again next week, as will even more of their 2015 rivals.