WorldSBK Donington: Rea ‘flirting with the limit’ for second

It was nearly a perfect day for Kawasaki’s Jonathan Rea at Donington on Saturday as he secured a remarkable new Superpole best of 1’26.080 and then was only second in the opening WorldSBK race to the remarkable and unexpected pace of race winner Toprak Razgatlioglu.

Rea’s first race plan was to go out on his own, but it was Razgatlioglu who did that, leaving the Northern Irishman riding hard and sometimes almost over the edge to get back into the fleeing Yamaha rider’s slipstream.

“In the beginning, it was a little bit of a mess, to be honest,” said Rea. “The first few laps, I tried to get track position as fast as I could. I really trusted myself to go to the front. I didn’t see today that Toprak had that kind of rhythm. So, if I was to do the race again I would have just focused and stayed behind him and let him do the job.

“I compromised myself going into the chicane,” he continued. “The first lap I lost track position and then I was fighting. He did a few solid laps to break the group. So, when I did get track position, I had Alvaro [Bautista] dive-bombing me every time at the end of the back straight into the chicane, or on the brakes into the Melbourne loop. So, it was one of them where I felt like on my own I could be okay. Then when we went down, Toprak had much better rhythm.

“I had nothing left at the end. I really struggled at the end with the rear. Not so much grip.

“After FP3, we changed the wheel base of the bike. I think it’s time we need to go back to the base setup of the bike. Being that little bit longer, it was quite stable, but I lost a lot of grip. When the grip did go, it was moving quite a lot. Some improvements for tomorrow. Different strategy as well. Try to be a little bit closer.”

Rea was both