Jonathan Rea (Kawasaki Racing Team WorldSBK) eased to his fifth win at the Misano World Circuit Marco Simoncelli in the MOTUL FIM Superbike World Championship, scoring a third consecutive win for the first time this year.

The championship leader, who following today’s results increases his gap with Chaz Davies (Aruba.it Racing – Ducati) in second to 80 points, led the race straight from Turn 1 after passing Tom Sykes (Kawasaki Racing Team WorldSBK) at the lights. Rea went unopposed from there onwards, keeping a safe gap with his two immediate pursuers.

While the heat and new Pirelli tyres had the teams working against the clock to find the best setup for their bike, Rea and his team quickly found their groove on the blistering Misano tarmac: “In the high temperatures the bike was working a little differently, but we anticipated that, Pere made some good changes for the race”.

“I arrived with ten laps to go feeling like the race had just started, so that was a real bonus in the hot conditions”, comments the Kawasaki rider. “And then at the end I was able to reign it back a little bit and arrive well within myself, because the bike was behaving quite differently at the end of the race. We have to look for a better improvement tomorrow on that initial grip drop, but aside from that I’m really happy”.

Tomorrow the Northern Irish rider starts from the back of row three. Rea is less worried about passing, and more about not getting caught up in traffic or turbulence at the start: “To be honest, there’s a lot of passing places here, the problem is that right from the line it kind of bottlenecks through that Turn 1, 2 and 3 section. You just need to make a really good getaway”.

“I just need to get through there safely tomorrow, and make my strategy from there”, Rea adds.

Rea hasn’t taken successive doubles this season. Will tomorrow mark a first in 2018? Join us tomorrow at 13:00 local time (11:00 GMT) and find out what goes down in the Pirelli Riviera di Rimini Round thanks to the WorldSBK VideoPass.