Jonathan Rea (Kawasaki Racing Team) can be said to be satisfied with the results of the Misano Adriatico round of the World Superbike Championship, the seventh round of the 2019 championship calendar, a race weekend that started 41 points behind leader Alvaro Bautista (Aruba.it Ducati SBK) but ended today just 16 points behind the Spaniard.
The Sunday of the reigning World Champion on the track named after Marco Simoncelli had not really started in the best possible way: after winning the Superpole yesterday and the victory in the “wet” Race-1, Rea had in fact thrown away a comfortable 2nd place in the morning Superpole Race because of a crash, from which he had quickly recovered that still bring home a 5th place while Bautista was celebrating his 14th victory of the season.
The turning point of the weekend – and perhaps of the entire season – came at the start of the “dry” Race-2 this afternoon, with Bautista immediately out of action due to a mistake and Rea ready to take the opportunity to make his 25 points of victory ahead of a battling Toprak Razgatlioglu (Kawasaki Puccetti Racing) and his pits mate Leon Haslam, who completed the resounding Kawasaki trio on the podium.
The turning point of the weekend – and perhaps the whole season – came at the start of this afternoon’s “dry” Race-2, with Bautista immediately out of action due to a mistake and Rea ready to take the opportunity to make his 25 points of victory ahead of a battling Toprak Razgatlioglu (Kawasaki Puccetti Racing) and his pits mate Leon Haslam, who completed the resounding Kawasaki trio on the podium.
Rea then commented on his 75th win in his career in Superbike, which for him also coincides with his 150th place on the podium:
“Winning two races at Misano is fantastic for us, especially as it was the two most important races! Unfortunately today, in the Superpole Race, I made a big mistake in turn-10 when I lost the front, but I immediately got back on track and managed to finish 5th, another important result in the weekend’s balance sheet.
In the final stages of Race 2, Rea and Razgatlioglu fought fiercely with their respective Ninja ZX-10RRs for the win, but the Northern Irishman made use of his experience by passing the Turkish talent with three and a half laps to go and then reeling back all his attempts to the finish line, which he crossed by just 381 thousandths of a second:
“Race 2 today was tough because the temperature was very high and I wasn’t very convinced of our pace. I felt like I was slow, even though I didn’t really want to push that much. And when I saw Alvaro fall at the start of the race I knew that the conditions would be very difficult, especially for the front tyre.
“I also had some problems with the rear tyre, which slid a lot, but in the end we won and this was the most important thing. It was a fantastic day for Kawasaki because we have three bikes on the podium in Race 2, with the three riders forming the official team for the 8 Hours of Suzuka!
Leave a Reply