This does not bode well. It's gonna be a long season if they can't rent some solid rocket boosters.
Remember, they had NO WSBK practice prior to this week. New crews and new bikes on different tires running different fuel (compared to AMA) with riders with no prior experience on this track. STEEP learning curve. It's only reasonable to expect it to take them a while (maybe a long while) to be competetive. May started out ~8 seconds down a lap on the first day of testing, dropped that to ~4 seconds a lap by the second day of testing. Patience, grasshopper.

Considering EBR started from scratch 4 years ago the fact that they're even here is a miracle.