WorldSBK Donington FP3: Jonathan Rea leads a British 1-2-3-4

July 3, 2021 EMR Writer

Jonathan Rea lead a soaking wet FP3.

We saw a soaking wet FP3 session in WorldSBK as you’d expect when you come to England in a world championship. We’ve had nothing but sunny skies for weeks here but as soon as there’s a bike race here, it’s rain, rain and more rain. It’s no surprise we got to see a British 1-2-3-4 in these conditions as us Brits are very used to this kind of weather.

Kawasaki lead the way this morning in a 1-2 with Rea leading his teammate Alex lowes by a huge 1.181 seconds, Rea clearly biting down on his gumshield and banging in a very impressive lap time to make his dominance and speed in these conditions well known to any rider who dares to battle him.

Ironically the top 4 are either the current or ex-teammate to Jonathan Rea with Leon Haslam in P3 and Tom Sykes in P4 nearly 2 seconds off the lead. The wet is dividing the grid massively and it’s interesting to see which riders are performing better than others, as we said it’s obvious that the British riders are going to perform well here given their experience and knowledge of riding here in the wet.

One rider who has no experience of riding here full stop, never mind in the wet is Garrett Gerloff. The American comes to the track for the first time and lead FP2 yesterday before setting a time worthy of P5 during the FP3 session, this time is incredibly impressive given his lack of experience and knowledge, I have seen many compare Donington Park to a typical MotoAmerica circuit meaning this could be playing to his advantage.

Axel Bassani was the quickest Ducati rider as Rinaldi, Redding and Rabat struggled outside of the top 10 and even 107%. The 21-year-old rookie had absolutely no problems with banging in a lap time worthy of P6, continuing to impress many in his rookie year in the premier production bike racing class, he led fellow Ducati Chaz Davies who once again has a lot of experience here which is playing into his hands.

Toprak Razgatlioglu finished in P8 ahead of Alvaro Bautista then rookie teammate Andrea Locatelli, the Yamaha also not performing very well here if you are a factory rider, much like the Ducati’s who have been out performed by independent riders.

Full results –