Reigning World Superbike Champion took his personal Kawasaki ZX-10R to the Lausitzring World Superbike test, driving it from the Isle of Man to Germany in a van in order to get some circuit knowledge ahead of the race there next month.

Rea’s works team were not scheduled to test alongside Pata Yamaha and Honda over the past two days but the Manx resident wanted to make sure he had some laps under his belt before free practice one so took his project with him.

“During the summer break when I realised we wouldn’t be going testing, I put it in my plan to do it on my bike but in the end we went as a team and it was good to have my mechanic Uri and Pere was able to understand quite a lot about what the track requires,” Rea told bikesportnews.com.

“I learned my way around it. It looks easy on a track map but there are a lot of little tricks you can learn, camber changes and some other challenges as well so it was well worth coming here, especially with race one on Saturday making Friday very important for setup.

“Now at least we don’t have to learn the track setup in FP1, we can crack straight on with setup and find gearing, so we have got a little bit of a head start.

“My bike is a project I have been working on for the past few months and it’s thanks to Martin Lambert and Ross Burridge at Kawasaki for making it happen, plus the team for helping me build the bike.

“The bike is basically a standard road engine and chassis but it has a fork internal kit and shock, handlebars and rearsets like my race bike. It’s not super-fancy but it is something I can do some riding on to stay sharp. In the break so far, the fastest I have been is probably on my pushbike.

“I had the option to ride a standard road bike or my own, so I chose my own. I really enjoyed it because although we can’t compare laptimes with the Superbikes, I was able to push to its limit and did 80-odd laps on day one before finishing early on day two as Uri had to drive the team van back to Barcelona and Kev Havenhand had to take my van and bike back to the Isle of Man, so big thanks to them too.”