Jonathan Rea will start tomorrow’s fourth round World Superbike championship races at Monza in Italy from the second row of the grid after setting the fifth fastest time in today’s Superpole.

It was a day of varied weather conditions at Monza, with overnight rain keeping the track wet for this morning’s second qualifying session, preventing Hiroshi Aoyama from improving his time to secure a Superpole position.

Rea qualified for the final shoot-out thanks to his time from yesterday and with Superpole declared wet, the 25-year-old Northern Irishman progressed to Superpole two with the sixth fastest time on wet tyres.

He went one place better on intermediates in Superpole 2, as French rider Sylvain Guintoli took pole position for tomorrow’s two 19-lap races at the historic 5.777km Monza circuit.

Jonathan Rea – P5, 1m57.630s (Superpole 2)

I was quite happy with that as qualifying was held in really difficult conditions. In the end we decided to go out on an intermediate tyre but, seeing as that tyre is made from very hard rubber, it was quite difficult to find grip. Maybe we could have been a bit braver but, anyway, fifth is a good spot to start on the grid. It’s on the left side, albeit on row two, and my gameplan tomorrow is just to get stuck in and see what happens. It’s going to be a classic Monza tactical race, with slipstreaming and everything, which should be fun, but my target is to be in the lead bunch and work it out from there. My hope is that the weather is dry because I’m not comfortable racing in the wet. The wet tyre won’t survive any more than three laps for any rider and, in intermediate conditions, it’s a case of who wants to take the most risk. So, for me, the best racing for the fans and for fun, will be in the dry.

Hiroshi Aoyama – P20, 1m44.686s (Qualifying 1)

Yes, another difficult day in not very good conditions. I was really hoping that second qualifying this morning would be in the dry so that I could improve my lap time and get into Superpole. Unfortunately, it was wet so we could not improve and I also had a problem with my engine, so it was not so good. In this afternoon’s free practice, it was still not completely dry. I went out to continue learning the racetrack but the conditions were not good enough to improve the set-up. I hope it’s dry tomorrow but I guess the good thing about being 20th on the grid is that there’s nothing to lose!


Pieter Breddels – technical co-ordinator

Today was plagued by really dodgy conditions and a wet track in both morning and afternoon sessions. It almost dried out at the end of this morning’s session and Jonathan was happier with the different balance that we made with the bike. He was almost able to match his best dry time from yesterday. Hiroshi had a technical problem so, again, the guy who needs the most laps had some more misfortune, both from this and from the weather. This afternoon Jonathan was quite fast in the wet conditions and finished fourth and put it on the fifth spot on the grid in Superpole. In the last session the track was drying a little so we gave him intermediate tyres which almost worked. With a better machine balance for Jonathan, we’re confident and positive for tomorrow.

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