WorldSBK Phillip Island: ‘I was going to give it a good go’ - Rea

After winning a race on Saturday, his sixth of the 2022 WorldSBK season, KRT’s Jonathan Rea was really in the mood to have a couple more big shiny cups to take to his nearby house on Phillip Island.

It was not to be, and both his front running rides were affected by some degree of misfortune. A wet front/intermediate dry set-up was the most pragmatic, sensible, get-to-the-end one for the ten-lap Superpole race choice, and both he and his closely following frenemy Toprak Razgatlioglu chose them to lead the race clearly. But Alvaro Bautista chose a slick/slick educated self-backing gamble, and it paid off.

Then in race two, with more rear tyre left to fight Alvaro Bautista with than he had imagined, Rea was waiting for the final laps to pass, but only found an early red flag keeping him in a close second place. It had also just started to spit with droplets of rain, so Rea is not sure he could have won race two in a fight with Bautista, but he was lining up for one anyway.

“You never know, just with the drizzle coming down,” he admitted. “There’s part of me that thought, ‘I need to keep it upright too.’ Maybe he might ride into a mistake with the conditions. You’re more at a disadvantage being at the front when the rain comes, because you’re the first guy to find the conditions. But… a mixture of disappointment and happiness to finish the year because that race, I felt really my bike was much better everywhere. Stability. We had more traction, side grip, acceleration off the corner. Just on the long straight, in sector four I lost too much. It was just everything I could do to be there. I could arrive about turn four, but taking huge risks, eating some tyre. Even eating the tyre, the tyre wasn’t dropping, so kudos to