Pata Honda's Jonathan Rea has shouldered some of the blame for an average season-opening performance at the Phillip Island World Superbike round, saying that he won't be able to push 100 per cent until he has full confidence in the electronics.
The team are still ironing out glitches in the HRC-supplied software, which sits inside the existing Cosworth ECU, which made the Irishman's life difficult in the slower turns and holding him back. He does see some light at the end of the tunnell, but knows there is a lot of work to do.
"Electronics are our main problem right now because back at the team’s workshop we found a little bit of power for the engine for this event and I know there’s another plan to develop that. It’s clear we need to make a couple of steps forward and bypass where we were the electronics last year," said Rea.
"It has been hard to set the electronics because from maximum lean angle to standing the bike up is quite a big difference. For the longer, faster, corners the system is working OK, but for the slower corners, like T4 or T6, it is holding me back a lot.
"For sure there is a quite a bit of time to be gained in that and I have to take some of the blame because that has a knock-on effect on my confidence, because you do not want to push until completely understanding the bike. We made big changes in the engine braking side for the race. We are learning all the time so this is probably not a true reflection of where we are.
"I feel there’s a light at the end of the tunnel though because I’ve already got some positive feelings with the new system. There are just a few inconsistencies when getting on the throttle with the traction control cutting in and holding back the engine.
"We made some positive steps with the bike between race one and two, and we’ve got a three-day test at Aragon, which we really need. Two finishes is always the aim for the first race, but we leave here still with work to do. We have to be realistic and understand we have only been working with this for a couple of months now.?"
