FIFTH PLACE FOR REA IN UK WORLDSBK RACE 1

Pata Prometeon Yamaha official rider Jonathan Rea finished as top Yamaha in the opening WorldSBK race of the weekend at Donington Park, leading his teammate Andrea Locatelli over the line by just over two-tenths of a second to finish fifth.

With a sold-out crowd expected for Round 5 of the FIM Superbike World Championship, the British fans were treated to an action-packed Saturday programme despite cooler than normal summer weather. Both Rea and Locatelli qualified on the third row of the grid, to line up P8 and P7 respectively for Race 1 this afternoon.

Rea took his best full distance race result this season so far. Fifth place was a fine result after coming through the field from ninth in the opening lap and a well-deserved confidence boost to take into battle for tomorrow.

Sunday starts with Warm Up at 9:00 BST, before two more WorldSBK races for the premier class: the 10-lap Superpole Race at 11:00 and Race 2 at 14:00.

Jonathan Rea – SP: P8 / Race 1: P5 

“One of the targets this weekend was for the top five – not that to achieve this in Race 1 means we can rest on our laurels, it will be nice to keep on improving! My pace was a little bit better than I expected. To be honest, we didn’t change my R1 drastically from Free Practice, we worked on small points this weekend especially with electronics to fine tune it. Top five and a nice little bonus was being top Yamaha – not something that we really think about too much because Loka was right there with me! It’s positive, but we want to be fighting a bit further up the field and we have two more chances tomorrow. It’s coming step-by-step and qualifying makes a big difference if you can get away with the front group from the start, but 23 laps of data is worth its weight in gold because now we can really sit down with the engineers and polish the settings a bit more for tomorrow to have another crack at it.”