Home Round For Rea

Donington Park in the UK will welcome the FIM Superbike World Championship this weekend, July 2-4, for round four of the 2021 campaign.  Six time World Champion Jonathan Rea will start his home event with a 20 point lead in the standings.

The WorldSBK championship has its roots at Donington Park having held its first race there in 1988. Unfortunately the UK round had to be dropped from the calendar in 2020 due to the Covid-19 pandemic so it is an exciting prospect to have racing back at the challenging 4.023km long circuit again in 2021.  It will also be one of the first rounds of the season to have fans in attendance. A small number of fans were at the last race in Misano, Italy and 4000 will be allowed to attend each day at Donington Park, something Jonathan is looking forward to.

JR has won on five previous occasions at Donington, four with Kawasaki and he is aware that it is a strong track for the Ninja ZX-10RR, which has won 13 races in the last seven outings at Donington.

The programme for this weekend will be dominated by the WorldSBK class with no WorldSSP or WorldSSP300 at this round. The schedule will remain the same however with Free Practice at 10:30 (GMT +1) on Friday; Superpole at 11:10 and Race one 14:00 on Saturday; and the Tissot Superpole Race at 11:00 and Race two at 14:00 on Sunday.

Jonathan Rea, stated: “I am really excited to go to Donington because we missed it last year. We had a great weekend there in 2019 and it is a circuit that I really enjoy riding at. From past experience it is also a good track for the Ninja ZX-10RR so I am excited to get the new and improved 2021 model there. Our first home race in two years and we will have some fans trackside, which is nice, although it would have been good to have a packed Donington. There will be a bit of atmosphere there and I am looking froward to it. I hope to make a really strong weekend and work from Friday morning to understand the tyre options Pirelli has brought, and we will continue to fine-tune our bike to be ready for the races. At the recent Navarra test we tried some chassis options and we have a great understanding of the working window of the bike, so we have options should we face some limitations. I feel we really understood how we could get the bike to turn better and that will help us in some sections at Donington.”