Pata Honda’s Jonathan Rea has reverted to settings similar to the ones that saw him take a double win at Imola and they were enough to put him in second place on the grid for tomorrow’s World Superbike double header at Portimao.
The Isle of man resident was three-tenths behind Superpole maestro Tom Sykes in today’s final timed session and he says going back to the base electronic settings has shown what the team tried in the intervening three races was too far from what they knew worked.
“After Imola we went away from the base setting with the electronics as we thought we had to improve more but Donington, Sepang and Misano were terrible rounds for us with engine braking because we were doing things completely different but here we have come back to a base setting,” said Rea, speaking to bikesportnews.com at Portimao.
“It means I can drop a lot more speed initially and hit the apex better, and we don’t have the trade off of backing in either. I like this place, though, and to come here with a good setting on the bike that clearly works well is good. Leon (Haslam, team-mate) has good race pace too.”
Rea doesn’t think that his Fireblade works better in warmer conditions than cold, rather it is a type of circuit that suits the now-ageing CBR1000RR than track temperature.
“I haven’t seen a trend for the bike working better in warmer conditions, Assen was cold, Imola and here are warm so it’s good in both conditions. I think it is the type of circuits, and how the braking points are, braking for a long time with angle that suits us. I don’t want to get too ahead of myself as there is a lot of work to do but at least we are climbing the mountain again.”
