It was cool and cloudy at Donington Park on Saturday as the fifth WorldSBK round continued. During Friday’s free practices Tito Rabat and Kawasaki Puccetti Racing had done a good job setting up their Ninja ZX-10RR KRT Factory Replica, the Spaniard setting a best time of 1’27”317. This morning saw Rabat back on track for the third and final practice (1’27”076), in which he prepared for Superpole. Despite improving further on his time (1’26”607) during that qualifying session, Tito placed twentieth. As a result, he started Race 1, which ran in the afternoon, from the seventh row of the grid.
When the lights went out he did not make the fastest start but a strong pace allowed Tito to make up positions and cross the line seventeenth.
The Kawasaki Puccetti Racing rider will be back at Donington tomorrow for the Superpole Race and Superbike Race 2.
Donington Park – Castle Donington – UK
Superbike World Championship
Superpole: 1) Razgatlioglu (BMW) – 2) Bulega (Ducati) – 3) Redding (BMW) – 4) Lowes (Ducati) – 5) Aegerter (Yamaha) – 6) Van der Mark (BMW) ……… 20) Rabat (Kawasaki)
Race 1 – 1) Razgatlioglu (BMW) – 2) Lowes (Kawasaki) – 3) Bautista (Ducati) – 4) Bulega (Ducati) – 5) Rea (Yamaha) – 6) Locatelli (Yamaha) ……… 17) Rabat (Kawasaki)
Tito Rabat
“I’m not happy with today’s race result, even if we’ve collected important data and understood where we can improve. We’ve shown good pace and closed the gap to the front, but we need more in order to take the kind of step that will allow us to score good result. We’ll try again tomorrow. Thanks to everyone on the team for their precious support.”
