Jonathan Rea has described his current performance levels in WorldSBK as "frustrating" after another weekend of lacking pace at the Emilia-Romagna Round.
Rea qualified down in 17th, and was trying to charge forwards at the start of Race 1 on Saturday, but crashed at turn 13 while trying to get around Dominique Aegerter, who would go on to suffer two technical failures in the races.
8-10 was Rea's Sunday scorecard, which even considering the pain resulting from the crash was not enough for Rea to give an evaluation of the weekend more positive than "really disappointing".
“Obviously a really disappointing weekend but I also have to feel very fortunate that I got away with that crash yesterday," Rea said, "because it was a huge one and aside from having a pretty sore left wrist and hand, physically on the bike I was not so bad."
Switching focus to his Sunday performances, Rea said: "I made two good starts today in both races, apart from where I got tangled up with Remy out-braking himself at Turn 8 on the first lap of Race 2 and I lost a lot of track position. But I just struggled to really get down to business when the tyre was fresh. The race came to me a little bit better at the end when the tyre was moving, but I couldn’t get the best out of the bike at the beginning and didn’t have the confidence.
"The current performance level is frustrating, but it's clear that the R1 can be more competitive so we need to find a way to translate my feeling to adapt and make changes that help me to get the best out of this package.”
Rea's teammate, Andrea Locatelli, faired better in Misano, but didn't have the pace to fight for the podium. Both Ducatis of Nicolo Bulega and Alvaro Bautista, winner of all three races Toprak Razgatlioglu, and even the Kawasaki of Alex Lowes proved a step above Locatelli on Sunday, although the Italian was able to beat Lowes to fourth in Saturday's Race 1.
“Honestly, I would like to do more and I would like to be on the podium, especially today at my home race and with great support from my fans from all over Italy," Locatelli said. "But we know we need to continue working and believe in ourselves, and continue to make progress forward to be there. Today for sure was not easy, but we got a lot of points, we didn’t make any mistakes and took a lot of confidence for the coming races.
"We had a good weekend and I would have liked to fight for the podium like at some other tracks where we have been stronger and can fight more with our competitors, but I think we did a good job, we were working very well and I want to say thanks to the guys for their efforts. It is always difficult in the hot conditions in Misano but we were a big step faster compared to last year."
