Rea Makes Positive Progress with Fine Fifth Place in UK WorldSBK Race 1
Pata Prometeon Yamaha official rider Jonathan Rea finished as top Yamaha in the opening WorldSBK race of the weekend, leading his teammate Andrea Locatelli by just over two-tenths of a second at the chequered flag at home at Donington Park today.
With a sold-out crowd expected for Round 5 of the FIM Superbike World Championship, the British fans were treated to an action-packed Saturday programme despite cooler than normal summer weather.
Both Rea and Locatelli qualified on the third row of the grid, to line up P8 and P7 respectively for Race 1 this afternoon. Locatelli made the better start of the two, with a strong charge down the inside line of Turn 1 to move up to fourth position and quickly into third on the first lap. A tussle with Nicolo Bulega on Lap 2 and a subsequent struggle with lack of rear grip saw him drop back down the order to seventh until a late battle with Danilo Petrucci was won for P6.
Rea took his best full-length result this season so far, fifth place a fine result after grinding through the field from ninth in the opening lap and a well-deserved confidence boost to take into battle for tomorrow.
Sunday starts with Warm Up at 9:00 BST, before two more WorldSBK races for the premier class: the 10-lap Superpole Race at 11:00 and Race 2 at 14:00.
SUPERPOLE RESULTS
RACE 1 RESULTS
Jonathan Rea – SP: P8 / Race 1: P5
“One of the targets this weekend was for the top five – not that to achieve this in Race 1 means we can rest on our laurels, it will be nice to keep on improving! My pace was a little bit better than I expected. To be honest, we didn’t change my R1 drastically from Free Practice, we worked on small points this weekend especially with electronics to fine tune it. Top five and a nice little bonus was being top Yamaha – not something that we really think about too much because Loka was right there with me! It’s positive, but we want to be fighting a bit further up the field and we have two more chances tomorrow. It’s coming step-by-step and qualifying makes a big difference if you can get away with the front group from the start, but 23 laps of data is worth its weight in gold because now we can really sit down with the engineers and polish the settings a bit more for tomorrow to have another crack at it.”
Andrea Locatelli – SP: P7 / Race 1 P6
“It was a difficult Race 1 to be honest, the track temperature was different to yesterday and also to this morning. I was fighting quite a lot with the rear tyre, and I think we lost a lot of time compared to normal in this area. But, we need to keep looking forward as well as understand what the problem was. I was confident, positive and happy on the bike until the race and I don’t know why this afternoon it was really, really difficult to manage the rear grip and it was spinning too much. Let’s see what we can do, because we are not so far from the front group. I was sure that today we had a chance to be on the podium, but something happened so we need to understand and to improve to try again tomorrow.”
Paul Denning – Team Principal, Pata Prometeon Yamaha:
“It’s been a challenging day for the team, but ultimately has ended with JR’s best full-race result of the year so far and backed up by a solid P6 from Loka. On Loka’s side, we got unlucky with a last minute technical fault in his number one bike before qualifying – meaning that the spare bike had to be used for Superpole and Race 1. Judging by his comments from after the race, it looks like he suffered some problems that weren’t apparent during Free Practice 1 or 2. With the data from today’s race, I’m sure the guys can take a good step forward for tomorrow. Loka now sees himself as a regular podium contender, so it is positive that he is not at all satisfied with P6. Jonathan wasn’t able to take the same jump from the start that Loka did, but he rode a super solid race and at many stages of it was the second or third-quickest bike on the track – coming from a long way back to secure a very-well deserved top five finish. We’ve decided with JR and the team that we need to go step-by-step, and today was a really positive move in the right direction.”
