Imola World Superbike race-one winner Jonathan Rea will make some small changed to the rear of his Pata Honda for the second race at Imola despite dominating the opening encounter and taking a lights-to-flag victory.

The Castletown resident was never headed in the clash and was able to run half a second quicker than the pack but said he encountered a little more tyre wear than the rest of the podium in a race where he says free practice homework has paid off.

“It wasn’t easy but for sure we have done our homework. I was expecting to be strong today but I didn’t know how strong the others would be. It is clear in practice when I am doing my runs I am very constant, not really having a rest lap in between fast ones, so it is easy to understand my pace,” said Rea, speaking to bikesportnews.com at Imola.

“I was quite lucky to make a gap and control the race from the front. I got great pit signals at the end and saw the guys behind had dropped into the 1’47s with about three laps to go so I made another low 1’48 and then controlled it until the end.

“I am quite happy but for race two we forget about race one and start again. The bike is working really well, we might have to change something at the rear as in parc ferme I saw we used more tyre than the others, which affected the end of the race as the electronics kicked in more, which slowed me down a little.”