After a total of five days’ riding at Phillip Island, Pata Honda’s Jonathan Rea now has a setup focus ahead of the next World Superbike round at Aragon, and that is to increase the amount of mechanical grip.
Even though the Castletown resident was able to look after his tyres in both races, the leaders were able to get away and set consistently faster laptimes, so Rea believes this is where he should now concentrate.
“I guess we have to be reasonably satisfied with the result here because we’ve made a big improvement over last year here at Phillip Island. It’s clear which areas we need to work on and it’s mostly mechanical grip,” said Rea.
“In race one, some of the guys struggled with tyre problems because it went the full distance, but I was able to look after my tyre which was a good thing. But we still need to make improvements in that area because the guys at the front had no problems.
"Race two was unfortunately stopped early because I think I was probably conserving my tyre a little more than I should have been. Sykes passed me into turn one but kind of stopped up in the corner and I lost a lot of places and lost touch with the group so the last few laps were quite boring. But I’m quite happy with everyone on my side of the box – we’ve been making good linear progress.
“They’re not results to jump up and down about but it’s a good way to start the season. I’m looking forward to getting back to some more conventional circuits in Europe and to aiming a lot higher than we did here.”
