Although Pata Honda's Jonathan Rea believes he is close to a good setup on race tyres for Sunday's Phillip Island World Superbike opener, he still needs to find outright single-lap pace for tomorrow's Superpole session.

The Isle of Man resident made some changes to his electronics after this morning's session and got some feeling and rhythm but still wants to work on the engine braking strategy and throttle pick-up ahead of the third and fourth sessions. He currently sits in tenth on a provisional grid.

"I was excited and nervous this morning, starting a new season, but it was quite tough witnessing the Supersport session this morning, which was full of mayhem and five red flags. I was a little unsure about the track conditions to start but we worked slowly and surely through some electronics changes but, unfortunately, my comments were a little strange because we were struggling to make progress with my feeling on the bike," said Rea.

"In the second session this afternoon we did a long run and I picked up a much better rhythm at the end and I felt a lot better on the bike. We still need to do more work with old tyres but we’re not so far away on used tyre pace.

"I feel we still need to do some work to get an out-and-out lap time. We’ve had a long de-brief and I think it’s clear that we can still improve the engine braking and the initial touch of the throttle."