Pata Honda’s Jonathan Rea won the first World Superbike championship race at Silverstone, his 11th series victory and followed up with fourth in race two. The Northern Irishman has hailed the victory as the ‘sweetest’ of his career, especially because of the changeable weather, which Rea has labelled as ‘scary’.

It was a day of mixed conditions, with race one delayed by twenty minutes and shortened by one lap, but starting dry. As light rain began to fall on lap six, however, 26-year-old Rea moved to the front and extended his lead to more than six seconds before easing off in the closing two laps.

Rea got a slow start to race two, circulating in ninth place before making a steady climb towards another podium challenge. However, the red flags prevented any further progress after a crash involving his team-mate Leon Haslam at Stowe, but the Isle of Man resident was less than impressed with his race two performance.

“Race one was probably one of the sweetest victories of my career because to ride out-front in those conditions was quite scary. I was so happy for the whole team and our sponsors, but I had to be very cautious. I also had to be smart and, as I saw the gap heading into the last few laps, I didn’t want to be throwing away that kind of lead,” said Rea.

“My team gave me a great bike after we pulled something out for Superpole that worked in the dry. We made a good change for race two and got up to fourth after I got stuck behind Tom Sykes for a few laps. I lost way too much time at the beginning but I was happy to do a 2’05 lap in the later stages. The race two result was OK but we can go into the summer break happy enough that we’ve got an overall package that can challenge for podiums.”