Honda's Jonathan Rea underwent a frustrating opening day at the Brno World Superbike round with a big crash in the first free practice session giving his crew a lot of work to do and then struggling with the ride-by-wire system in first qualifying.

The Isle of Man resident could only muster 15th in the timed session, which qualifies him for Superpole should it rain in the morning, and says the Fireblade's electronic systems are making Brno's long, flowing corners hard work on his wrist.

"It’s been a bit of a frustrating day all together, to be honest. I just haven’t found a great feeling with the bike yet; or the track. But after a long de-brief, the direction we need to go is quite clear. The bike is quite different to when I was here two years ago, when the pace was faster than I can achieve now," said the Irishman.

"But we have that data so tomorrow we can run out with a different linkage which will make the bike work in a better way, I hope. Also, with the corners here being long and flowing, throttle control is really important but right now the ride-by-wire seems to be a bit much.

"My wrist needs to take over some of the work to get a better feeling. It stopped me having the confidence to really, really push today but I won’t panic because it’s quite logical what we need to do for tomorrow."