Jerez Test Wednesday Times: Barbera Fastest In MotoGP, Rea Dominates WorldSBK

Wednesday saw some MotoGP teams join an expanded World Superbike field at Jerez for the first day of combined testing, and the first day with official timing. With the weather much improved, it was a busy day with teams spending a lot of time on track.

At the end of the day, the Ducatis led the way in MotoGP, Hector Barbera and Loris Baz putting the Avintia team on top, ahead of the Aspar Team's Alvaro Bautista. Scott Redding ended up as fourth fastest, a thousandth of a second quicker than Aleix Espargaro on the Aprilia.

Among the World Superbike riders, it was Jonathan Rea stamping his authority on the class, nearly seven tenths quicker than his main rival from 2016 Chaz Davies. Most impressive of all was that the time Rea set on his Kawasaki ZX-10R World Superbike machine was just over a tenths of a second slower than Hector Barbera's time on the Ducati GP16 MotoGP machine, and the second fastest time of the day. Even more impressive was the fact that Rea set his time on a used race tire from October, rather than a new qualifier or experimental tire.

There was plenty for the MotoGP teams to test at Jerez. All of the Ducati riders bar Danilo Petrucci and Michele Pirro on the GP17 bikes were riding without winglets, ready for 2017. Ducati were sticking to their program of testing the GP17 with the wings to continue their evaluation of the changes to the chassis. The are expected to roll out a wingless version of the GP17 at the Sepang test for the first time.

Though the Repsol Honda team was absent, evaluation continued on the new big bang motor for the RC213V. Jack Miller got his hands on the engine for the first time, while test rider Hiroshi Aoyama used the old engine.

There were some notable absentees. Alex Rins could not join his new Suzuki teammate Andrea Iannone as he is still recovering from fracturing the T8 and T12 vertebrae in a testing crash at Valencia. Pol Espargaro was still banned from testing the KTM by Yamaha, leaving the test work to Mika Kallio and Bradley Smith. Worth noting was the fact that Kallio was half a second quicker than Smith on Wednesday. 

The factory Yamaha and Tech 3 riders were also absent, busy testing out in a very private test at Sepang. There has been no news from there, the media having been banned from attending the test. The only communication has been a post by Maverick Viñales on his Instagram account, declaring him "very happy".

Official times from Wednesday: