News

10 facts you need to know ahead of the MOTUL Thai Round

Tuesday, 20 March 2018 09:53 GMT

Countdown to the second round of the season with our 10 facts and stats

1.            Jonathan Rea (Kawasaki Racing Team) has never finished lower than second here, winning five times out of six.

2.            Rea’s team-mate Tom Sykes (Kawasaki Racing Team) has won the only race his team-mate hasn’t won here: Race 2 in 2016.

3.            Jonathan Rea has led every single lap around Chang International Circuit both last year and in 2015.

4.            In Buriram, Marco Melandri (Aruba.it Racing – Ducati) will try to score his third consecutive win in Race 1. He has secured a string of three wins in his WorldSBK career before, in 2012: Race 2 in Aragon and a double in Brno.

5.            This is the only track of the 2018 calendar where Tom Sykes has raced but hasn’t recorded pole.

6.            There are only three tracks on the current calendar in which Chaz Davies (Aruba.it Racing – Ducati) never qualified for the front row: Buriram, Misano and Jerez.

7.            This is the only track where Jonathan Rea has finished all the races he has started on the podium.

8.            The WorldSBK Championship has run 80 races in Asia so far.

9.            The most successful rider in Asia is Jonathan Rea, with 8 wins (5 in Buriram, 2 in Losail and 1 in Sepang). Rea overtook Carl Fogarty last year, who has won seven times in Asia (2 in Johor, 2 in Sugo and 3 in Sentul).

10.          Ducati have won at six of the eight Asian tracks in the history of the Championship: Johor, Losail, Sentul, Sepang, Shah Alam and Sugo. Missing from this list are only Buriram and Istanbul.