Donington second row for Rea

Jonathan Rea will start tomorrow’s two fifth-round World Superbike championship races at Donington Park in the UK from the second row of the grid after setting the fourth fastest time in this afternoon’s Superpole sessions.

The 26-year-old Pata Honda rider from Northern Ireland lapped the 4.023km Donington circuit in a time of 1m28.139s as Tom Sykes took pole position for tomorrow’s two 23-lap races.

Rea was joined in Superpole by his team-mate Leon Haslam, a significant achievement for the 29-year-old, who lives less than 30km from Donington Park, and who broke his leg badly at Assen in The Netherlands just four weeks ago.

Haslam has used the sessions so far at Donington to try and improve his comfort on the CBR machine and plans to try some more modifications in tomorrow morning’s warm-up.

Jonathan Rea – P4, 1m28.139s

I guess today was OK and I’m happy enough to be fourth and to be in the top two rows here. We started the weekend a little on and off and sluggish with the settings, and it really didn’t help with Friday morning being wet and the second session not being perfect. So we’ve really only made progress between the two sessions today and I think we haven’t shown our full potential yet. I know I’m struggling a little bit on the bike in some areas and we need to iron that out first but I was quite happy with the lap time we set in Superpole 3 on a race tyre. Hopefully I can make two good races tomorrow.

Leon Haslam – P13, 1m29.172s

I’m frustrated more than anything. I can’t do what I want to do on the bike but I was happy to get into Superpole and I just missed out in the first stage by less than a tenth. I went slower on the Q than I did on the race tyre but that’s just the way it goes. I’ve got to wait and see what more we can do to help me out for tomorrow. There are some issue with the bike, as there are every weekend, but a lot of it is me more than the bike and I’m trying to change the bike more to help me than to go faster. I’m getting quite a lot of pain from the bone movement when I put pressure through it and the knee bend is still one of the biggest problems for positioning on the bike. It is getting better but its getting more sore with more irritation but I’ve only got one more day to go!

Pieter Breddels – technical co-ordinator

Leon fought his way into Superpole this afternoon, which was a tremendous achievement in itself. He missed out on Superpole 2 by a fraction and took 13th place, but it’s not easy for him. He can’t ride the bike as he wants to and we’ll see how he feels in the morning, maybe to try some more things to make him more comfortable. With yesterday’s weather, we had a few issues to sort out with Jonathan and had a few more problems this morning. We made a step forward in the second free practice though, and Jonathan was able to take fourth place in Superpole, even though the qualifier did not allow him to go much faster. We’ll try to give him a bit of rhythm in warm-up tomorrow and make some final changes that will allow him to fight for podiums.