SBK | Pata Italian Round, Race1: great performance for the Kawasaki Racing Team

After a complicated start to the season in Australia and Thailand, the European season has once again made it clear that this year too the Kawasaki is the bike to beat: after the excellent results in Aragon and Assen, Rea and Sykes dominated the first race at the Autodromo Enzo e Dino Ferrari in Imola, where the fifth round of the season is taking place.

The reigning World Champion in particular had no rivals: he had the advantage, gained, of starting from pole but led the race until the checkered flag, never showing signs of giving up, obtaining his fourth victory of the season.

“That was the plan, to be honest” – he says Jonathan Rhea – “We had a good pace and I wanted to dictate my pace, so I tried to open a small gap and then managed it. Pretty quickly the gap got up to three seconds and then I improved and managed when it stabilized, it was a good win. It seems like Race 1 was an easy race to win, but I just had fun! The team gave me a great bike.”

For Rea, the days of testing in Brno were very useful: “We arrived here with the bike that had the setup from the Brno tests and it went well. I'm very happy, because Brno is a very fast and fluid circuit, while this is much more twisty and there are a lot of first gear corners, so I was very happy. We didn't modify the bike much, because basically it was good. Hopefully we can continue like this and make some more improvements during the year.”

Tom Sykes had a somewhat complicated qualifying session, with laps canceled and only one attempt available: therefore starting from the second box, he was unable to replicate his teammate's pace, but overall he was satisfied with second place.

“It was difficult, I had half of my tire on the curb, so it's difficult to judge. I think that if all the rubber is off the curb it definitely needs to be cancelled, but on this circuit, with these bikes, you think there is a little more tolerance, but obviously not. It only affected me when I pushed with the qualifying tyre. I didn't have any other good laps, so I didn't want to go too hard, the front row was good enough, it definitely made today's race easier” - he said Tom Sykes - "Why not? Today's race wasn't bad, Jonathan was in great shape,” he says confidently. “Tomorrow I'll start from the third row, I'm confident as far as me and the bike are concerned, it'll just be a matter of immediately passing riders who have been difficult in the past. We must avoid problems tomorrow."