Tito Rabat hails “best day so far” in WorldSBK after fourth place in Cremona practice
Rabat ended Friday practice at the Italian Round in fourth place.
A fourth place for Tito Rabat in WorldSBK FP2 at the Italian Round in Cremona was comfortably the Spanish rider’s best showing so far in the championship.
Rabat, the 2014 Moto2 World Champion, currently sits 21st in the riders’ standings, with a best result of 14th. But, at Cremona, he was less than 0.3 seconds off the fastest time, and two places ahead of the reigning World Champion, Alvaro Bautista.
“It was definitely my best day so far in an official race weekend,” Rabat told WorldSBK.com.
“We started quite good. We made two consistent stints. In the end, here is a new track and we had the opportunity to come and test here three months ago.
“Everyone tested so we’re in the same situation as the rest of the riders. It’s a new track, it’s a narrow track.
“My Kawasaki works quite well. We are trying to understand, as a private team with my crew chief and mapping guy, all the information from Kawasaki. We started well with P4.
“Now what’s important is trying to work as an official team, try to have some help for tomorrow to make a step [like] the official guys will do.
“I know that I’m fast. We have the bike; we just need to manage the weekend well.”
Attempting to explain his speed at Cremona, Rabat said: “I do a lot of training. I try to do my best. The official guys go to practice every weekend and I try to go to the Spanish championship with the standard bike to practice.
“I try to do tests with Manuel, but we can’t do the same amount as the other [teams]. Then, we try to do what we can, and we are doing our best.
“The reason for Cremona, maybe because it’s the first time everyone comes here, it’s a narrow track and the Kawasaki works quite well on these kind of tracks.”
Perhaps there is also some superstition in it for the #53.
“The most important is the 53rd track that WorldSBK goes to,” Rabat joked.
“Cross fingers, we’ll see if we can take profit of that. We worked so well with the starts. We start well. The reality is we were P4 today, so why not tomorrow?
“We just need to keep calm, take all the information from Kawasaki and KRT and try to manage the information in the best way possible.”
