Pata Honda rider Jonathan Rea finished in seventh and fifth positions in yesterday’s two seventh-round World Superbike championship races at Misano World Circuit ‘Marco Simoncelli’ in Italy.
With temperatures hovering around 30˚C and the track in the mid-40s, the two races were won by Tom Sykes as Rea, 27, fought to harness as many championship points as possible after a testing race weekend. At the halfway point of the season, he holds fourth place in the standings.
His Pata Honda team-mate Leon Haslam endured an eventful raceday, finishing 10th in race one after an electronics glitch just three laps from the end. The 30-year-old crashed on the last corner of the 4.226km Misano circuit in race two but minimal damage to his CBR1000RR Fireblade SP allowed him to re-mount and take 12th place at the flag.
Jonathan Rea: “It’s been a disappointing weekend for me because it feels like we’ve made zero progress here. It was frustrating to be unable to pinpoint and fix the problems we’ve had and, while I don’t want to sound like a broken record, I feel a bit like one with my comments in the garage. We were able to salvage a top five in race two after some brave passing in the fast parts of the circuit but the group at the front was too far away. I can only ride the bike as well as it’s working, but I want to be able to race it again. We can’t just hope that the next round will be better; we need to evaluate what’s been going wrong and try to find some different solutions. It’s been frustrating for the whole team because I know we haven’t been able to get the best out of the CBR this weeken d. I know that on the right day and in the right environment, the bike is capable of much, much more. The whole team feels like we’re under-achieving right now so we need to do our homework and fix things as quickly as possible.”
Leon Haslam: “I got a bad start in race one and got stuck for a couple of laps before working my way up. By then, I was about four seconds off the group in front, which included Johnny [Rea] and I felt like I was holding my own. I had a few little issues but then, with three laps to go, the ECU seemed to just cut-out. I pulled off the track, re-booted it using the kill-switch and managed to get going again to finish tenth. In race two my start was better but I had a bit of a yo-yo race, losing time in some corners and making it up again in others. I was right on the group that went up to fifth but then had another issue that led to the crash. We need to assess what that problem was and go from there. I think we’ve made some progress this weekend and I was able to do some better lap times in the races but there’s more work to do before Portimao.”