Jonathan Rea recovers from ‘lost’ FP1 session to finish fourth

Jonathan Rea put behind him a ‘lost’ WorldSBK FP1 session to claim fourth place overall - third in FP2. 

Rea managed to finish this morning’s session in eighth, but was limited to fewer laps than many of his competitors, as a rear brake failure on his main bike meant swapping the system over to his second Ninja ZX-10RR machine. 

"Yeah I had some brake issues in the morning. Unfortunately the rear brake wasn’t working at all. It’s strange circumstances because it just came back from a service," said Rea.  

The six-time world champion has gone from not using the rear brake at all four years ago, to now using it in every corner. 

The Northern Irishman added: "It’s strange because I never used the rear brake three/four years ago. I never touched the rear brake, now I’m using it every corner subconsciously and it’s like my balance, my stabilizer, so when you don’t have it you're like ‘no way!’. 

"At the end of the session I thought I needed to go out and learn to ride without it just to see in case this problem happens again; man! Could I (not) get close to my rhythm. 

"But luckily we had bike two in the back and we just swapped the system from bike two and it seemed to cure everything.” 

The FP2 session returned to normality for Rea as he was immediately fastest, before day-one pacesetter Michael Rinaldi took over. 

"I went out in the afternoon and immediately felt quite strong. We were able to put a lot of laps on the new rear tyre that Pirelli brought," said Rea. 

"I quite liked it, I was able to be constant, fast, not super fast over one lap, but very constant. Unfortunately we couldn’t make any progress today because this morning’s session was lost."