Jonathan Rea had to settle for seventh and eighth places respectively in the Superbowl Race and Race 2 during the third and final day of the Grand Ridge Brewery Australian Tour on Sunday. The Kawasaki driver did not hide his disappointment afterwards.

Jonathan Rea won’t be leaving the Phillip Island Grand Prix circuit in Australia with a smile on Sunday, settling into a supporting role in both the Superpole race and Race2 after losing both races on Sunday. Seventh and eighth places were results that did not quite meet his expectations.

In Sunday morning’s Superbowl race, Rea lost several positions after colliding with Dominic Egerter. With only ten laps in the sprint race, it will be difficult to make up lost ground in this season’s most competitive (middle) field.

Later in the day, in Race2, after starting from seventh on the grid, Rea found himself in a group battling for fourth – two mighty Ducati factory machines and the better starting Andrea Locatelli – eventually finishing eighth.

Especially in the second part of the race, Rhea had to drop out and saw several drivers coming along. Afterwards, the six-time world champion said his Ninja’s setup was not optimal and it was a disappointing day for him and Kawasaki.

Jonathan Rea: “Today was a disaster in terms of our results. In the Superpole race, Aegerter went aggressive on lap 4 and pushed me off the track. I came back well but couldn’t pass Öttl because his Ducati has too much power out of the corners. I had to take a lot of risks in this competition. Then I watched Race2 and saw Locatelli and I immediately thought he was the guy to follow because he was on good pace. But he immediately withdrew, and I immediately realized that it was going to be a tough battle in the group for fourth place. That happened too, but suddenly I noticed that I was losing more and more grip, so I had to try and save my tires as much as possible. It was only partially successful, and in short, it was frustrating.
We must now analyze things properly and ask ourselves how this is possible. Today – especially in the second and longest race – we came up a bit short. I think these two lesser results do not reflect where we really are today. During the two days of testing here, I felt we had really improved the bike, but today we had to fight for these positions. We have to make sure that such bad days do not come to us,” he said.

In the Championship, Alvaro Bautista has hit 100% this weekend and will leave Australia with 62 World Cup points in his pocket. Locatelli is second on Phillip Island with 34 points ahead of Rea and Michael Ruben Rinaldi with 31 points.

Useful links Grand Ridge Brewery Australian Tour:

Time Table and Full Results
Where to Follow on TV
Photo report