Portimão A Strong Venue For KRT Riders Rea And Sykes
The FIM Superbike World Championship reaches the halfway point in a few days’ time when KRT riders Jonathan Rea and Tom Sykes head to Portimão for the seventh round of the series. Each has happy recent memories of the Portuguese circuit, with Sykes winning race one in 2014 and Rea victorious in race two.
At the most recent round in Donington, a home weekend for both KRT riders, Rea extended his long-term championship lead with two second place finishes behind his resurgent team-mate Sykes, who in his turn scored his first two race wins under the new technical rules that were brought in this season. Sykes’ moved to within one point of second place in the championship rankings after his perfect Donington weekend.
Having only joined Kawasaki’s official WSB squad this year, Rea has won no less than eight of the 12 races run so far in 2015 and scored second place in all the other four. This puts him on a remarkable total of 280 points, with the season still not quite half completed. He has now lifted his career race winning total to 23, part of a career podium tally of 54.
Of possibly even more relevance this coming weekend is the fact that Rea has scored a remarkable eight previous Portimão podiums in the WSB class, including his race two victory last season. Rea had his first full WSB race at the circuit on the Algarve – way back at the end of the 2008 season.
Portimão is also the scene of previous WSB success for 2013 WSB champion Sykes, who has won two previous Portuguese races, the first in 2012 and the other being race one last season.
With 24 career WSB race wins, 55 podiums and an impressive 26 pole positions, Sykes is hungry for more success as soon as possible after he and his technical crew found strong settings to match the new technical rules. These have allowed him to compete right at the top from the start to the finish of the most recent races.
The 4.592Km circuit at Portimão is a remarkable feat of racetrack design and execution, with its many undulations and blind corner entries making it a real challenge for the riders, as well as one of the most dramatic circuits on the entire calendar for race fans and TV viewers alike.
After the Portimão round there will be a one-day official test on Monday 8th June at the same circuit, which will allow the KRT staff and riders to try out some new developments and set-up ideas, ready for the following race weekend at Misano, between June 19th and 21st.
Following the test, both KRT riders will fly to the Isle of Man for a Monster Energy TT parade lap on June 10 each riding a unique road going Ninja ZX-10R replica of their racing machine alongside seasoned Kawasaki TT rider, James Hillier, mounted on the new 300 horsepower supercharged Ninja H2R.
Jonathan Rea: “I have been soaking up the pre-TT atmosphere here in the Isle of Man before I head off to Portimão. It is a circuit that I really enjoy and it requires quite a lot of different techniques in a few areas. It is a cool place to go in general and the weather should be really nice at this time of year. I am looking forward to riding the Kawasaki there because I have some really good memories from previous race weekends. Now we have a really good way of working with the KRT Ninja ZX-10R and we need to keep working together, Pere and all the crew, to really understand the bike and the track on Friday and then build towards two strong races. We did not test at Portimão in the winter because we did a lot of testing at Motorland and Jerez. I took a race win at Portimão last year, in the wet, which was very nice. This year is a new year so we will just try and build on what we have done already. My target at Portimão is to go for both races.”
Tom Sykes: “I feel good after the Donington Park round, really happy with the way we approached the weekend in general. The way we evaluated everything and moved forward paid off. We have a good track record at Donington but we did nothing special. We had made some small steps at previous events, turned a corner at Imola and that carried on to Donington. I needed to get my season going and in the last four races we have been second, second, first and first. So I have felt more at home on the bike and we have had been doing a lot of points scoring. I feel I have a bike set-up where if I get passed I can re-pass, and that really excites me. I feel we have made improvements in general and we have a fairly decent track record at a number of the circuits coming up so I feel we have the set-up heading in the right direction in the nick of time. I won a race at Portimão last year and I am really looking forward to heading to Portugal and experiencing the KRT Ninja ZX-10R there.”
David Salom (Kawasaki Team Pedercini) raced at the previous round in Donington despite a painful injury to his elbow and he scored good points in each race. He will try to maintain this form at the undulating Portimão layout. WSB rookie Roman Ramos (Team Go Eleven Kawasaki) will be out to continue the positive form that has seen him finish races inside the top ten more than once In 2015. Ramos is currently 13th in the championship and Salom 15th.