The first day of action of the first round of the 2019 World Superbike season saw Jonathan Rea (Kawasaki Racing Team) and newcomer Alvaro Bautista (Aruba.it Ducati) dominate the timesheets during the two free practice sessions held on Friday. During the morning, four-times World Superbike champion Rea was able to contain Bautista efforts to be the fastest rider on the Australian track, but after lunch, the Spaniard showed he is the biggest challenger to Rea’s domination on this championship, getting his Ducati Panigale V4 R to the top spot.
Without experiencing any problems on his bike, Alvaro Bautista set the best lap with a 1m30.327s, still eight tenths of a second slower than the official lap record of Jonathan Rea, set in 2017. This lets us believe that over the weekend the lap times will be even faster than those seen on Friday, and the best of all is that no less than 13 riders are separated by just one second!
Jonathan Rea, who can make history this season if he becomes champion for the fifth time in a row, starts the first round of the year with the second fastest time in Phillip Island, edging out his new teammate Leon Haslam to third spot.
These first two free practice sessions also saw two big surprises: The first one was the performance and consistency of Tom Sykes. The former World Superbike champion, with the brand-new BMW S1000RR, was the fourth fastest, a great performance by the British rider taking in consideration that the bike is still in the early stages of development.
The second big surprise of the day was Leon Camier, another British rider. World Superbike fans know Camier to be fast on any bike, but last season with Ten Kate Honda wasn’t anything to be proud of. The Honda CBR1000RR Fireblade SP2 lacked development and performance, so Leon Camier was never really able to fight for the best spots. For this season though, Honda Racing Corporation decided to take matters into their own hands, and with the support of Moriwaki and Althea Racing, HRC is now a force to be reckoned with.
Keep following iMotorbike to get all the results and reports on the first round of the 2019 World Superbike season, that starts this weekend in Phillip Island, Australia.