Wet Final Day For WorldSBK riders
Gordon Ritchie | November 25, 2016
After dominating the test so far, Rear stayed in the box on Friday.
After a wet opening day and three dry days the final outing for the few WorldSBK riders and teams who were still around was held in full wet conditions on Friday 25th November. There were some periods of particularly heavy downpours, but it did allow for real wet weather testing to take place.
Neither of the KRT riders – Jonathan Rea and Tom Sykes – ventured out on the final day but Chaz Davies and Marco Melandri did on their official Aruba.it Racing Panigales. Michael van der Mark also set laps on the official R1 to get used to the Pata Yamaha in wet conditions. Leon Camier contracted food poisoning and did not ride on his MV Agusta Reparto Corse F4 the final day.
Davies, who did 43 laps and ran almost to the end of the day, was overall fifth fastest against a few MotoGP runners from Ducati, KTM and Honda. Melandri placed sixth and VDM seventh of seven.
Not a wasted day for those who needed the wet track time but still the final day on track before the series heads off for its winter break. Testing reconvenes of most top WorldSBK runners at Jerez again, between 24 and 25 January 2017.
With Portimao back on the – finally – released provisional 2017 calendar many of the teams will head back there to make their final European test days before the first official DWO tests at Phillip Island (20 & 21 February) just before the first round of the championship, with races on 25 and 26 February.
