Jonathan Rea adds to the 2023 roster a weekend to forget, at least partially. The results were not up to the standard he considers, and even He has apologized to his team for how he has dealt with the Phillip Island round with the Kawasaki.
And that’s counting that in the first of the weekend’s races, on Saturday, he was the great rival of Álvaro Bautista. A mechanical problem with the clutch left him out of the fight to chase the man from Talavera, but he still got on the podium with second position. In the Superpole Race he lost time in an action that deprived him of being at the top, and in the last race he looked at Bautista from afar: eighth.
“It has been a difficult weekend”, he concludes after the round. Not happy, he says that “we suffered a lot with the set-up and especially with the increase in temperature in Race 2. This morning in the Superpole Race I lost several positions to avoid colliding with Aegerter”, which has prevented him from being in the fight
The problem, Rea points out, is with the set-up of the Kawasaki ZX-10RR. “Unfortunately, I didn’t feel comfortable on the bike, as I had problems with the set-up”, he narrated at the end of the weekend, and says that he missed a competitive motorcycle: “The Kawasaki had no grip and I lacked acceleration. I had the pace to stay in the group, but I couldn’t fight with the other riders. I was struggling in a few corners”.
Aware that “this is the reality of everything”, comments that “It’s useless to deny it, since I couldn’t attack”. The summary of it is that “It has been a disaster and I take responsibility since it was me who drew the path to follow at the beginning of the week in the tests”. He will again have the opportunity to set up the bike in Mandalika, “where we will start from scratch and look in the mirror to analyze data and find answers to our questions”:
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Knowing that “we were competitive in Portimao and Jerez” says that about the ZX-10RR “I don’t think it’s a problem related to the new bike, since the Kawasaki is practically the same as last year”. Yes, the motorcycleIt has a new homologation, but the interventions were simple details to maximize the strong points and contain the weak ones”.
Also read: Bautista wins in Australia and achieves the first triplet of the season
In the Kawasaki box.”everything looks like a puzzle” and they are already late to solve it, because Ducati and Bautista seem to have hit the key already in the first round, and the advantage is more than evident. Many things can happen, because this is just the beginning of a year full of competition.