Rea fourth in Donington opener

Jonathan Rea took fourth place in the first of Sunday's two fifth-round World Superbike championship races at Donington Park in the UK, but there was not much else for his Pata Honda team to celebrate this weekend.

Today’s two 23-lap races were won by British rider Tom Sykes, but neither featured Rea’s Pata Honda team-mate Leon Haslam, who was withdrawn following morning warm-up after consultation with the team's management and medical staff.

Haslam broke his leg badly in a practice crash at Assen in The Netherlands four weeks ago and had undergone intensive therapy to compete at Donington, which is his home round. However, despite qualifying on the fifth row of the grid, his discomfort during warm-up prompted the team’s decision.

Rea had shown potential during yesterday’s practice session, qualifying in fourth place on the grid, which is where he finished race one. However, an electronics sensor failure just before race two, which restricted him to eleventh place at the flag after 23 difficult laps of the 4.023km Donington circuit.

Jonathan Rea – 4th and 11th

I was pretty happy with my pace at the start of race one but, as soon as my tyre started to go, off the electronics were cutting too severely and I lost a lot of pace. I even struggled to compete with Laverty and Guintoli as they came past. Race two was a complete disaster. Already, on the sighting lap, I told the guys that we had a sensor problem on the traction control. They said there wasn’t enough time to fix it so I went out on a bike that I was really unsure of. In reality it was cutting way, way too much power and I even tried to turn the traction control off, but it wouldn’t turn completely off. It was the worst 23 laps I’ve ever ridden. I’m really frustrated after all the work we’ve done – we struggled for dry time at the start of the weekend but made some inroads during warm-up this morning and I felt good in race one. I feel like we should have been on the podium twice today.

Leon Haslam - DNS

Looking at the guys ride around Donington and knowing what I’ve done here in the past makes it kind of frustrating to sit and watch the races in the motorhome. Jonathan proved in race one that the bike was capable of fighting for the podium and I feel I might have been up there. There are a lot of ifs and buts, but I think it was the right decision not to ride. Even though I haven’t been riding today, the leg is still quite sore so I’ll get bit more physio, have a few days off, and see how we get on. The surgeon who operated on me says the best thing would be a few days on a warm beach so I’m going to look at an early flight out to Portimao and continue the work out there.

Pieter Breddels – technical co-ordinator

Jonathan got a really good start in race one and moved into second behind Tom Sykes. He could keep in touch with Tom for almost half the race, which was very good, but in the end he dropped off a little and finished just off the podium in fourth. We were getting ready for that podium finish in race two when we got a problem with the sensor on the grid. We thought we had solved the problem by bypassing the sensor but it didn’t work out and that was the end of his race. Jonathan did not have a bike to compete with at all and I’m very sorry this happened because I think it robbed him of podium finish. Both he and the bike showed potential again this weekend so we’ll look forward to Portimao, when we’ll get Leon back on the bike as well.