Jonathan Rea laments “tough” racing return at Aragon World Superbike

Jonathan Rea made his return to WorldSBK action last weekend at MotorLand Aragon, but endured a difficult weekend in Spain.

Rea finished the races in 14th, 12th, and 13th position, respectively, scoring only five points across the weekend at a circuit where he has won nine times in WorldSBK.

On the contrary, Yamaha has never won at MotorLand, and the reasons for that were especially apparent at the weekend, with the R1 losing out significantly in the final sector which features one of the fastest straights in WorldSBK.

The bottom three bikes on the speed charts in Race 2 were all Yamahas, with Rea 18th overall and 10.4kph (6.5mph) off the fastest bike: the Ducati of Nicolo Bulega. Rea was also 17th-fastest overall in the final sector in Race 2, almost half-a-second slower than race winner Alvaro Bautista and 0.201 seconds slower than his own teammate, Andrea Locatelli.

“[A] super difficult end to the weekend,” concluded Rea after Race 2, making no mention of his injured thumb in the explanation for his results.

“I didn’t make ‘bad’ starts but had bad track position from turn one and then lost positions on the back straight in quick succession,” the six-times champion continues.

“In the Superpole Race I had good pace at the end, I was going forward. But in the long race, I just had traffic, and feel like with the Yamaha R1 you need clear track to really take advantage of all its strong points.

“Of course, when you’re in traffic you can’t do that and then I was vulnerable on the back straight. I got stuck behind Remy [Gardner] for a few laps, he passed me and I tried to pass him back — and then his pace wasn’t fast enough to go with the group.

“Finally, when I got past him, I was able to make some inroads to [Axel] Bassani and [Michael Ruben] Rinaldi but, in the end, I just ran out of laps.

“Our pace wasn’t good enough, so it was a bit frustrating and a tough weekend overall.”

The weekend was not much better for Andrea Locatelli, although the Italian was at least able to get his R1 into the top 10 with a ninth-place finish in Race 2.

“We gave our maximum again this weekend and we just finish in P9 unfortunately today,” said Locatelli.

“The results are not what we want, but we give our all in every single session. We know we need to improve and we need to do more.

“I was happy in the Superpole, then we tried to do the maximum that was possible in the races. This morning we were in trouble after some laps with the tyres and today in the main race, also a little bit, especially on the rear tyre.

“We need to understand why the track surface made everything so different compared to the past. It’s a bit more difficult for us, but anyway, we need to look forward.

“We have two more races, we can learn until the end of the year — maybe we can have an opportunity in Estoril and Jerez.

“I want to be positive until the end, I think this year is quite complicated because all competitors are so strong, but we try to do our best and look to make another step.”