Dixon and Chantra gain ground on opening day at Magny-Cours
Circuit de Nevers Magny-CoursWorldSBK practice unfolds on day one at Magny-Cours, with narrow margins separating the riders.
The factory Honda HRC team and riders Jake Dixon and Somkiat Chantra are at the French Circuit de Nevers Magny-Cours for the ninth Superbike World Championship round of the 2026 season. Friday’s free practices provided an opportunity to build feeling and confidence ahead of the weekend’s three races.
Benefitting from warm, sunny weather throughout the day, Dixon and Chantra set to work in the morning’s first practice session. Starting from where they had left off at the recent test, the two factory riders made some progress right from the off. The session was briefly interrupted by a red flag following a crash for another rider, but once back on track, Dixon and Chantra remained firmly focused on their goals. By the end of FP1, the British rider had put in a best of 1’36.554 to place an encouraging eleventh, while his Thai teammate placed eighteenth with a personal best of 1’36.972.
The afternoon’s FP2 saw both Jake and Somkiat continue to work on setup together with their technicians. Riding in higher temperatures compared to the first practice, both Dixon and Chantra were able to improve on their lap times, setting a 1’36.471 and a 1’36.734 respectively. The Thai rookie suffered a crash at Turn 3 in the final minutes of the session but was fortunately unhurt. Jake and Somkiat rounded out day one in eleventh and eighteenth place respectively in the combined standings.
Both riders look forward to Saturday’s final free practice session, where they will continue working on the setup of their respective CBR1000RR-R FIREBLADE SP machines ahead of Superpole and Race 1.
"Today was nothing to shout about, but after a difficult start to the season, I think we are starting to gain a little bit of momentum after a couple of good tests. We’ve still got a lot of work ahead of us but, step by step, we’re trying to extract all we can from the bike. I made a few mistakes during a time attack at the end of the day, so that wasn’t ideal. Now we need to analyse the changes we’ve made and understand whether they’re better or worse. We need to keep pushing as a team, bringing together everyone’s thoughts and ideas to keep moving the project forward. Compared to the test, we’re basically running the bike as we had it in Estoril. Every time we see an improvement, we try to keep that direction. So, like I said, step by step.”
"Today was nothing to shout about, but after a difficult start to the season, I think we are starting to gain a little bit of momentum after a couple of good tests. We’ve still got a lot of work ahead of us but, step by step, we’re trying to extract all we can from the bike. I made a few mistakes during a time attack at the end of the day, so that wasn’t ideal. Now we need to analyse the changes we’ve made and understand whether they’re better or worse. We need to keep pushing as a team, bringing together everyone’s thoughts and ideas to keep moving the project forward. Compared to the test, we’re basically running the bike as we had it in Estoril. Every time we see an improvement, we try to keep that direction. So, like I said, step by step.”
“We’ve finished our first day here at Magny-Cours. With respect to the test, we brought some settings from Portugal and tried them here, but the feeling was different. This morning we tried something and then tested out a different approach in the afternoon. I pushed a little bit, but it was more difficult to make a lap time compared to the test. During the test I was riding at maybe 80 percent and felt that the lap time came more easily. Anyway, tomorrow’s another day and we’ll try to get the feeling back.”
“We’ve finished our first day here at Magny-Cours. With respect to the test, we brought some settings from Portugal and tried them here, but the feeling was different. This morning we tried something and then tested out a different approach in the afternoon. I pushed a little bit, but it was more difficult to make a lap time compared to the test. During the test I was riding at maybe 80 percent and felt that the lap time came more easily. Anyway, tomorrow’s another day and we’ll try to get the feeling back.”
