Chaz Davies had every reason to be unhappy at losing a place because of a signalling mix up from the officials at Losail in race one, but his passions were also raised looking back at the 2018, and then looking forward to 2019 – even though he and Alvaro Bautista will have an all-new, MotoGP-derived V4 to take on Rea and KRT.

“Hopefully next year it will be something different,” said Davies about the potency of his end of season 2018 technical package. “It shows when Tom is on form and had a point to prove, nobody is in the same race as those guys. It is a bit of a joke and they are getting more of a homologation for next year.”

Davies was unimpressed by a question about why KRT can still give Rea a winning package when they lost so many of their revs and top speed prowess compared to 2017. And a supplementary question of what can he sees the Kawasaki doing on track that makes the difference.

“Championships are not won on who is on the fastest bike; I said that in January,” said Davies. “You do not need to go out on track with it - you can stand in the paddock and see differences. I am in a team pretty equal to theirs but their full focus is there. And when your full focus is somewhere… I think I have told you enough about what effort is going into it.”

So for Davies the new bike for 2019 has to come with more of what it will take to compete with Kawasaki, which does not of course have any clash of resources or focus, doing Superbike racing only. “We need to step up. A new bike is not enough. Otherwise it is just going to be a boring championship next year. Kawasaki have homologated another new bike, the fourth in as many years. It is ludicrous. We have homologated one since we have been riding it.”

When it was pointed out that in the glory days of the V-twin, Ducati homologated new bikes and especially new parts with great regularity, Davies passions were really aroused. “I do not care what they used to do, we are racing in 2018! I do not care what people were doing in the year 2000 or 2010.

“Everybody is down on this championship because it is boring, and for the right reasons. There is one manufacturer bringing might to the table and we need to do something about that or just continue to watch boring races and we will slog it out for second. Nobody seems to prod enough. You guys, do some digging.”

After his swipe at the media Davies was keen to underline that he knows Kawasaki are doing a good job, again.

“I give the credit to them because you cannot take anything away from them,” he said. “You cannot take anything away from Johnny, you cannot take anything away from Tom when he rides like that. The guys are doing their jobs very well. But something has to change for Superbike to be really competitive again. Something has to change. I could go on but I have already said too much.”

How do you stop a manufacturer that spends maybe double of the next best guy, however? Davies gave one idea, as Kawasaki is set to unleash another new model for next year, with around 600rpm more as a standard model.

“You can start by not giving them a new homologation. The rules go there and they go there.”