Pata Honda’s Jonathan Rea had many reasons to celebrate at his team’s home World Superbike round of Assen – after getting on the podium not once, but twice at the Cathedral of Speed.
But the Northern Irishman left his best performance till last as he dominated a very wet race two to clinch his fifth ‘special’ victory at the TT circuit, after ending race one on the third step of the podium.
Rea’s podium finishes in today’s races extend his record of scoring at least one rostrum finish each season at Assen since 2010, giving him a total of eight in ten races over five years.
Today’s first outing was dry, despite forecast rain, and Rea settled into a rhythm, but did not have quite enough pace to match eventual winner, Aprilia’s Sylvain Guintoli, with Kawasaki’s Tom Sykes finishing second. The rain eventually arrived for race two and Rea took the lead on the opening lap and kept his rivals at arms length, eventually crossing the line two seconds ahead of fellow British rider Voltcom Suzuki’s Alex Lowes.
“It’s been a really good weekend because we’ve been on the podium twice. To be honest, our dry pace was OK in race one but Sylvain made such a fast start to the race, I struggled to go with him. When Tom went past I made a big mistake but, after that, my pace until the end was quite similar to theirs,” said Rea.
“For race two we were quite excited to see if we could go with them in the dry but during the break it rained quite heavily. After some delays, we got going for a 10-lap race and to win that was really special.
“It’s a wet race win around Assen but I kept having flash-backs to Magny-Cours in 2012 when I had a 10-second lead and crashed. For the last laps I just tried to be as smart as I could, and they were long laps, because I had a bit of a gap. I just want to thank all the team.
“This win’s for all those guys who have worked tirelessly throughout the winter and since the start of the season to make the CBR as strong as possible. It’s great to be able to give them back some good vibes to roll with into the next part of the season.”
