Kawasaki Racing Team’s Jonathan Rea finished today’s first race from the Jerez Circuit third after battling problems with rear grip. The result saw him lose just four points to his championship rival Tom Sykes.
The Northern Irishman has endured a pretty wretched couple of days in Spain so far. Yesterday’s free practice sessions saw Rea and his Kawasaki team make radical changes to his ZX-10R, but the results were negative and the team had to spend quite some time reverting to a base set-up. This delay denied Rea the chance to do a race simulation, putting him on the back foot heading into today.
Superpole went well for him. He managed to guide his Kawasaki to a 1m39.602s to qualify on the middle of the front row, though some five tenths of a second off the pace of Sykes.
In the race, Rea battled hard with his teammate in the opening couple of laps, but he was pretty powerless to stop Sykes and Ducati’s Chaz Davies from scything past. With the pair gapping Rea, he had no option but to hold station and protect third place. The reigning Champion heads into Sunday with a 44-point advantage now with just 75 up for grabs.
Rea explained after the race that he had no traction from the off, and the grip from his harder Pirelli tyres dropped away quickly. With his first chance at winning the title on offer tomorrow, this is something the team will need to rectify overnight.
“After today’s race the thing on my mind was that it was better to consolidate our points and move on, to take one step closer to our ultimate goal. We had no traction from early on and some front and rear slides so for tomorrow we need to understand that,” explained Rea.
“All in all I am happy to be on the podium for the first time at Jerez. We have just won the Manufacturers’ Championship today, three races out from the end, so that is another good point about today because it shows the hard work that Kawasaki, the team and all the staff have been doing this year, as well as last year. I am happy to contribute to that back-to-back Manufacturers’ World Championship.”
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