Jonathan Rea finished on the podium for the second time in three races this afternoon, finishing as runner-up in the second of today’s two seventh-round World Superbike championship races at Imola in Italy.

Second place for the 26-year-old Pata Honda rider from Northern Ireland made up for the disappointment of crashing out of today’s 21-lap opener, which was won, like race two, by British rider Tom Sykes.

Rea had got the perfect start to race one, taking the holeshot before running wide at the second chicane of the 4.936km Autodromo Enzo e Dino Ferrari. He rejoined the race in eleventh place and had battled his way up to challenge for third before crashing out unhurt with two laps remaining.

His Pata Honda team-mate, Leon Haslam, took two top ten finishes today, completing his first race since breaking his leg badly at Assen in mid-April. The 30-year-old was tenth in race one and followed it up with ninth place in the second outing, battling right to the end of 21 very tough laps.

Jonathan Rea – DNF and 2nd

Really mixed emotions today. We had really good pace all weekend, but not enough for Tom [Sykes] today, who seemed like he had something in reserve, especially when it got hot this afternoon. I pulled a big ‘holey’ in race one and thought “I’m gone here”, but I had a big vibration the whole race on the brake disc, so I couldn’t push the front like I wanted. I made a mistake on the first lap, but made a lot of ground up and then unfortunately crashed when I was pushing for the podium with a couple of laps to go. In race two I just rode my ass off and made zero mistakes. In the first five laps I couldn’t go with the two guys ahead, so they gapped me and by half distance, Tom had eked out a lead tenth by tenth. I need to work with my crew to make the bike better with a full fuel load and fresh tyres. But it’s clear that we’ve addressed some of the problems we’ve had when the tyres drop. We can leave Imola with our heads held high because we’ve addressed some of the issues we had earlier in the season and we look forward now to Moscow.

Leon Haslam – 10th and 9th

You know, if I’d sat it out since my injury and got two top ten results like that on my first race back, I’d be pretty happy, so I’m feeling OK. I know where I’m struggling – I still can’t weight the pegs like I want, but I managed to pass a few people in the second race like Badovini and Cluzel and Checa. So I’ll take that as my start point. I’ve got some testing to do for the 8-hour, a few more weeks of training, then Moscow and we’re still really only halfway through the season. Step by step we’re getting back to where we should be, so I’ll take those two top tens as a big positive for the weeks ahead.

Pieter Breddels – technical co-ordinator

Jonathan got a really good start in race one but ran off a couple of corners later and had to start over again from further back. It was all running fine until two laps from the end when he pushed a little too hard and crashed. In race two he got another decent start but rode pretty much alone, but we’re quite happy to take a second back home. Again, we’ve had a good race and a bad race, so I hope we can head to Moscow for two good ones. Leon had two quite good races and for us that was quite a breakthrough. He was able not just to complete two races but to fight for positions. He’s still not 100% and if he can ride top ten in that condition, things will only get better. He’s getting more happy with the settings on the bike as well so, with some weeks before Moscow, we can look forward to him being fitter. It was a good day for him.

Event results - Round 7 - Race 1

1 Tom Sykes 37m52.860s GBR KAWASAKI Kawasaki Racing Team
2 Davide Giugliano 7.198 ITA APRILIA Althea Racing
3 Eugene Laverty 9.484 IRL APRILIA Aprilia Racing Team
4 Marco Melandri 10.323 ITA BMW BMW Motorrad GoldBet SBK Team
5 Michel Fabrizio 18.697 ITA APRILIA Red Devils Roma
6 Chaz Davies 19.531 GBR BMW BMW Motorrad GoldBet SBK Team
7 Leon Camier 22.412 GBR SUZUKI Fixi Crescent Suzuki
8 Ayrton Badovini 29.142 ITA DUCATI Team Ducati Alstare
9 Loris Baz 36.828 FRA KAWASAKI Kawasaki Racing Team
10 Leon Haslam 37.507 GBR HONDA Pata Honda
11 Carlos Checa 39.239 SPA DUCATI Team Ducati Alstare
12 Max Neukirchner 43.334 GER DUCATI MR-Racing
13 Federico Sandi 1'12.069 ITA KAWASAKI Pedercini Team
14 Vittorio Iannuzzo 1'30.685 ITA BMW Team Grillini Dentalmatic
15 Noriyuki Haga 1'30.773 JPN BMW Team Grillini Dentalmatic
16 Jonathan Rea DNF GBR HONDA Pata Honda
17 Jules Cluzel DNF FRA SUZUKI Fixi Crescent Suzuki
18 Sylvain Guintoli DNF FRA APRILIA Aprilia Racing Team

Event results - Round 7 - Race 2

1 Tom Sykes 37m51.947s GBR KAWASAKI Kawasaki Racing Team
2 Jonathan Rea 5.032 GBR HONDA Pata Honda
3 Sylvain Guintoli 10.201 FRA APRILIA Aprilia Racing Team
4 Marco Melandri 13.120 ITA BMW BMW Motorrad GoldBet SBK Team
5 Chaz Davies 13.630 GBR BMW BMW Motorrad GoldBet SBK Team
6 Loris Baz 23.949 FRA KAWASAKI Kawasaki Racing Team
7 Leon Camier 25.420 GBR SUZUKI Fixi Crescent Suzuki
8 Michel Fabrizio 36.511 ITA APRILIA Red Devils Roma
9 Leon Haslam 40.184 GBR HONDA Pata Honda
10 Ayrton Badovini 41.100 ITA DUCATI Team Ducati Alstare
11 Jules Cluzel 47.888 FRA SUZUKI Fixi Crescent Suzuki
12 Carlos Checa 52.182 SPA DUCATI Team Ducati Alstare
13 Max Neukirchner 56.352 GER DUCATI MR-Racing
14 Federico Sandi 1'15.992 ITA KAWASAKI Pedercini Team
15 Noriyuki Haga 1'25.210 JPN BMW Team Grillini Dentalmatic
16 Eugene Laverty DNF IRL APRILIA Aprilia Racing Team
17 Davide Giugliano DNF ITA APRILIA Althea Racing
18 Vittorio Iannuzzo DNF ITA BMW Team Grillini Dentalmatic

Championship standings

1 Tom Sykes 235 pts GBR KAWASAKI Kawasaki Racing Team
2 Sylvain Guintoli 229 pts FRA APRILIA Aprilia Racing Team
3 Eugene Laverty 191 pts IRL APRILIA Aprilia Racing Team
4 Marco Melandri 182 pts ITA BMW BMW Motorrad GoldBet SBK Team
5 Chaz Davies 154 pts GBR BMW BMW Motorrad GoldBet SBK Team
6 Loris Baz 136 pts FRA KAWASAKI Kawasaki Racing Team
7 Jonathan Rea 125 pts GBR HONDA Pata Honda
8 Michel Fabrizio 120 pts ITA APRILIA Red Devils Roma
9 Davide Giugliano 99 pts ITA APRILIA Althea Racing
10 Leon Camier 80 pts GBR SUZUKI Fixi Crescent Suzuki
11 Jules Cluzel 77 pts FRA SUZUKI Fixi Crescent Suzuki
12 Max Neukirchner 60 pts GER DUCATI MR-Racing
13 Carlos Checa 59 pts SPA DUCATI Team Ducati Alstare
14 Ayrton Badovini 59 pts ITA DUCATI Team Ducati Alstare
15 Leon Haslam 42 pts GBR HONDA Pata Honda
16 Federico Sandi 28 pts ITA KAWASAKI Pedercini Team
17 Ivan Clementi 18 pts ITA BMW HTM Racing
18 Vittorio Iannuzzo 15 pts ITA BMW Team Grillini Dentalmatic
19 Niccolo Canepa 11 pts ITA DUCATI Team Ducati Alstare
20 Alexander Lundh 10 pts SWE KAWASAKI Pedercini Team
21 Fabrizio Lai 8 pts FRA KAWASAKI Pedercini Team
22 Glen Allerton 6 pts AUS BMW Next Gen Motorsports
23 Jamie Stauffer 4 pts AUS HONDA Team Honda Racing
24 Noriyuki Haga 2 pts JPN BMW Team Grillini Dentalmatic
25 Mark Aitchinson 2 pts AUS DUCATI Team Effenbert Liberty Racing
26 Kosuke Akiyoshi 2 pts JPN HONDA Pata Honda

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