Rea extends Assen podium record with fifth win
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01/01/1970
Jonathan Rea took a commanding win on his Pata Honda CBR1000RR Fireblade SP in the second of today’s two third-round World Superbike races at Assen in the Netherlands. It was his fifth win at the 4.542km circuit, his 12th career SBK victory, and a superb follow-up to his third place finish in race one this morning.
Rea’s podium finishes in today’s races extend his record of scoring at least one rostrum finish each season at Assen since 2010, giving him a total of eight in ten races over five years.
Today’s first outing was dry, despite forecast rain, and British rider Rea, 27, settled into a rhythm, but did not have quite enough pace to match eventual winner, Sylvain Guintoli, with Tom Sykes finishing second. The race ended five laps early when oil was dropped on the circuit, Rea’s Pata Honda team-mate Leon Haslam, 30, taking eighth place at the flag.
The rain eventually arrived for race two but not before the race was declared ‘dry’ and started under threatening skies. The first attempt was delayed after the end of the warm-up lap when the rain finally fell in earnest. While some riders lined up on the grid, others, including Haslam, entered the pits to switch from slick tyres to full wets.
The second attempt to start the race was stopped after just three laps when the rain became torrential and red flags were waved. A long wait followed for track conditions to improve, with a shortened 10-lap race finally starting two hours behind schedule.
Rea took the lead on the opening lap and kept his rivals at arms length, eventually crossing the line two seconds ahead of fellow British rider Alex Lowes, with Davide Guigliano finishing third.
Jonny Rea
It’s been a really good weekend because we’ve been on the podium twice. To be honest, our dry pace was OK in race one but Sylvain [Guintoli] made such a fast start to the race, I struggled to go with him. When Tom [Sykes] went past I made a big mistake but, after that, my pace until the end was quite similar to theirs. For race two we were quite excited to see if we could go with them in the dry but during the break it rained quite heavily. After some delays, we got going for a 10-lap race and to win that was really special. It’s a wet race win around Assen but I kept having flash-backs to Magny-Cours in 2012 when I had a 10-second lead and crashed. For the last laps I just tried to be as smart as I could, and they were long laps, because I had a bit of a gap. I just want to thank all the team. This win’s for all those guys who have worked tirelessly throughout the winter and since the start of the season to make the CBR as strong as possible. It’s great to be able to give them back some good vibes to roll with into the next part of the season. |
Leon Haslam
Race one was a bit frustrating really because I felt we could have been easily fifth from where we were. The pace wasn’t that mega but we had a lot of issues again this weekend. It wasn’t right in race one but I think fifth was still possible. The flag put an early end to it anyway. I was confident that, for the dry, we’d made the right move for race two but it was wet. In the first part I was already up to fifth when they stopped it but, in part two, I got caught behind Chaz [Davies] and it took me a few laps to get by him. When I passed him, everyone had gone, but I was able to be one of the fastest guys on track in the last three laps. I managed to get past Baz and Melandri and was closing the gap to Tom [Sykes] but then ran out of time. We hadn’t really done any wet testing, so it was positive that we weren’t too far away. The pace was pretty good but starting from where we were on the grid didn’t help either.
© 2014 Pata Honda.
