SBK, Rea: "I did the best possible race"

From the first race of the season until now, everyone (starting with Chaz Davies) has tried to beat him, but Jonathan Rea has always come up trumps. The Kawasaki – Rea pairing is just too strong, winning race after race to achieve an extraordinary five out of five races run so far. If it was tough to do any better than last year, the Northern Irish rider is managing to do just that.

“I completed the best race I could - starts the world champ – given that Chaz was strong in some sections where I was not and vice versa, so I had to work out how to act during the race. In braking, in the changes of direction and in terms of grip, the bike was really great today, and the tyres gave me the feeling that they had something more to give in the last laps”.

This is how Johnny set up his strategy, one that paid off.

“Through the middle part of the track, Chaz was stopping me from getting into a rhythm and trying to break away, so all I could do was to follow him, pressure him and wait for him to make a mistake. There weren't many chances to pass, but in the end Chaz made a mistake on the penultimate lap. I hope he's OK, but that opened the way for me to be able to win. I think it would have been difficult to win a head to head with him on the last lap, as he was just so fast through the last sector. It's a win achieved thanks to another's crash, but I think I deserve it for having ridden well”.

On the other side of the green garage, Tom Sykes didn't show the potential we saw in practice, and only scored a podium thanks to Davies' exit, when the Englishman was far from the temporarily third-placed Marco Melandri. But all this does have an explanation: “At times you receive gifts in the race, but we have to work harder. My day didn't start well because at 4am I work with some sickness and I suffered in the race. I couldn't eat before the race and could barely drink. but there's always a way to sort things out in the race”

There was another factor that hindered the Brit. “With the wind I was struggling to turn the bike which meant I had problems at the rear, from stressing the tyre too much; we need to improve from this point of view. Tomorrow I hope to feel better, and we need to improve the general set-up of the bike”