By Graeme Brown
Not everything had been ready for a full spec race machine in Almeria so it was a case of setting up riding positions, mechanics getting used to spannering the bikes and so on. Now with everything prepared the bike looked pretty trick when it rolled out of pitlane on Tuesday morning at Jerez. One thing I noticed however, was that they were running Nissin brakes. Nissin were only present in the paddock in recent years with the Ten Kate Hondas. Everyone else ran Brembo. Sykes apparently was really reluctant to use the Nissin product and was insisting on having Brembos. However, the deal was done long before Sykes put pen to paper and Nissin have gone all-in with BMW and SMR having their Racing Service on hand at both the Jerez and Portimao tests. There were other little noticeable changes up and down the paddock. The Barni Racing team, which is widely seen as an offshoot of the Ducati factory team and have taken Michael Ruben Rinaldi under their wing, are running Showa suspension. Showa
have been a very big part of the success at Kawasaki over recent years and I was really interested to see their product on the Ducati. I couldn’t nail anyone down to find out the exact reason. Could it be that Ducati want to run it on their satellite team to get a handle on the performance of the Kawasaki? The current rules make it possible for anyone to buy the same equipment as the factory teams so it would make sense to see what the competition is using. In personnel terms it was interesting to spot Phil Marron in the Puccetti garage working as crew chief to Toprak Razgatlioglu. Phil has been a long term crew chief and friend of Eugene Laverty. I wonder how the relationship will develop but the Turk was pretty quick at both tests. Jonathan Rea continues to be top of the pile, setting the fastest times in both Jerez and Portimao, and he is resolutely determined to stay there. I had to visit him at home in Northern Ireland a couple of weeks ago. As I was coming off the ferry from Scotland he messaged me to say
he was at the gym but to come up and by the time I get there he should be finished. When I arrived he was just starting the final exercise, pushing a sled with metal runners, laden with weights, up and down the car park in 10, 20 and 30 metre shuttles, for the following 20 minutes. By the end he looked drained. He has been doing that most days since December in order to stay fit and strong. One man who has been hot on his heels at the tests is Alex Lowes. Alex and his brother Sam have pitched up at Valencia circuit and been training there since the start of the year. They have their own pit box and each day have been doing gym sessions, finished off by repeated efforts running up and down the hill along the back straight. Anyone who has been there knows how steep that is. We all follow our heros on social media and we see pictures of them riding motocross or supermoto, trials riding in the mountains or pedaling a push bike in some sunny location. What we don’t see is the hard graft of turning themselves inside out on a