Castrol Honda Superbike team just completed a private two–day test at Phillip Island before the official tests next week that precede the opening round of the season.
Weather conditions were mostly dry, but wet conditions during the Thursday morning session saw Jonathan Rea head out on wet tires and crash at turn 1, leaving the Brit rider with a sore neck and getting carted off to the hospital for scans, which fortunately showed no injuries, but he did miss the final half day of testing.
Rea talking about his test and crash said, “Everything felt really good yesterday and we did more laps than we’ve done during the whole winter in Europe.
This morning it was wet but, when it stopped raining and looked like clearing up, I went out but got off the bike quite quickly at Turn One.
I hurt my neck a bit, but the paramedics insisted on putting me in a brace and taking me to hospital where it took about four hours to get a scan.
Everything was fine and it was a little frustrating to lose the time, but yesterday showed that we’re in a pretty good place, so I’m looking forward to some more testing on Monday.
” Teammate Rubén Xaus, who’ll be celebrating his 33rd birthday tomorrow said, “I’m quite tired actually! I’ve done a lot of laps yesterday and today, and this is quite a physical circuit.
Combined with trying lots of different things and still a bit of jet-lag, it’s been a tough couple of days – but so far, so good.
We’ve had to go through a lot of different things to learn more about the bike and how it behaves in different situations.
I don’t want to go out and just give it full gas for three fast laps; I want to be able to go fast after a lot of laps, which is really important here.
We know which direction we’re going in and we’ll follow that way when we come back on Monday and work a little more on stability through the corners.
”The two Castrol Honda riders will now have the weekend off before returning to the same circuit on February 21st and 22nd for official testing.