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WorldSBK Magny-Cours: 'Pace ridiculous' for Rea in opening race

It was an eventful weekend at Magny-Cours for Jonathan Rea long before he rode through the rain to record his 98th career race win in WorldSBK race one on Saturday afternoon and move a gigantic 65 points ahead of Scott Redding at the head of the championship table.

He had been fast from the start, had run off track on Friday, then fallen in FP3 this morning, before bouncing back to finish third in Superpole, and escape the melee that claimed the two riders in front of him in turn one of race one.

After some rapid repairs to his bike Rea was back out and on it again after FP3’s indiscretion, but it was a slip up brought on by too much belief, rather than too little.

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“I had too much confidence,” said Rea. “It was an out lap, with the hard rear tyre in super-wet conditions. The first time on the left side of the tyre with less temperature than yesterday. I did not do much different to Friday but it was enough to crash and I got away with it.

“Well, I didn’t get away with it but I got away with a couple yesterday so I was owed a little bit of a reminder just to calm down a bit. The idea in FP3 was to not go out, just sit in the garage until the end and do a practice start, but it was me… I wanted to ride. I could see the lap times coming and generally I can arrive quite fast in pace, but that was my downfall today.”

His biggest issue, once he got into the race lead other than some consistent pressure from second place rider Loris Baz for a time, was racing the resurfaced track, in conditions that were wet but changing as the race went on.

“It was super-hard to keep concentration for all 21 laps at the front,” said Rea. “The pace was ridiculous but that is down to a few things. Obviously we had a good set-up on the Ninja ZX-10RR but also Magny Cours did a really good job of the new tarmac.

Last year in these conditions a 1’53/54 was a good lap time, and now are doing 1’48/49s in the wet conditions. Incredible. Massive thanks to my team, and everyone around, because I think we got the best out of the bike. You can never have a perfect set-up for the wet, because the conditions are always changing.

“Sometimes it is fully wet; sometimes there is just a little bit of water, then sometimes even a drying track. Overall the compromise of our set-up for the rain was very good.”

Rea was reminded that he came one step closer to consecutive title number six today, but he was not being drawn too far into that one just yet. “I do not want to think about a title just yet,” he said, “that’s a question for when it happens or if it happens, but of course we did a really good job today for the championship.

“This year the hardest thing compared to previous years has been he lockdown period because I entered that period fourth in the championship after a crash in Phillip Island. I was working really hard with myself in lockdown, physically, and really pushing the team to try and make some improvements over the summer testing.

“We needed to improve the bike in the heat. I feel that when we come back to Jeez we wee in good confident form, and since then we have been able to be really strong.”

On track this year so far has also been different for Rea as there have been many changes to the riding line up and some new bikes – some of whom have had - relatively speaking - nothing to lose.

“It is always different when you do not understand your rivals so much. Racing so close to Rinaldi in Aragon, I had to learn where he was strong compared to the other Ducatis, for example. But I just concentrate on myself, try to forget who else is in the race and do what I can with my bike.”

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