WorldSBK Indonesia: ‘Bautista is the one making the difference’ - Rea

Last year at Mandalika in the final WorldSBK round, Jonathan Rea could not win the championship for the seventh successive time, but he did win both those races.

On Sunday in Indonesia he scored three podiums, recorded his 200th podium place for Kawasaki (and 242nd for his career in general, and left reasonably happy. But still without a win since Estoril.

He was, in general, a lot happier to race at Mandalika on Sunday this year as opposed to Saturday, when the racing line was narrow and all parts of that circuit away from the racing line were a bit dicey. The line was obviously bigger on Sunday, especially from the saddle of a 230bhp WorldSBK machine.

“Yeah, it was a lot wider; I didn’t realise,” said Rea after the end of race two. “Yesterday I was scared. As soon as I didn’t have the pace, it was more a case of not making mistakes. But today I felt like I could really push much more than yesterday. It was nice.

“Yesterday pointed out the fact that there was not a lot of people here today, but today there was a lot of people around the track. Amazing. Nice to see and to have some spectators.”

The contrast between the Saturday and Sunday crowd was stark, but Sunday’s races had real atmosphere in the more crowded areas of the occasionally massive and many smaller grandstands.

The surface itself was still difficult, to say the least, but Rea said it was a much better prospect for the final day. But off line, still very tricky.

Still dangerous but the line was much wider today so there was more room for error, let’s say. That was it. It’s very hard to race at the minute with our package in a group, but because today I was more or less on my own, or the guys in front passed me once and it wasn’t a battle. I was just there