Reigning World Superbike Champion Jonathan Rea isn’t panicking after only just squeaking into Superpole two tomorrow at Sepang as he spent the day working on race setup with the hard rear Pirelli and didn’t go for a time attack lap with the soft tyre.
Rea was the last man to automatically qualify for a slot in the top ten while Kawasaki team-mate Tom Sykes will have to go through Superpole one as he finished one place further back. The Castletown resident also made some changes to his electronic setup and seems confident he can use the soft rear for a laptime tomorrow if needs be.
“I am good in the first split time and not so good in the middle two. We focused on using the harder tyre because I think for everybody it is quite a gamble to use the softer tyre on this new tarmac. It seems all the times in front were set on the softer tyres,” said Rea.
“So we are not panicking and just working for the race. Everything feels fine. We learned quite a lot today because we worked with the bike quite a lot – electronically we changed some things. Our consistency seems quite good it is just that the surface here is bringing a good lap time with the softer tyres.”
