Jonathan Rea (Kawasaki Racing Team) continued his perfect start to the latest FIM Superbike World Championship campaign on the Ninja ZX-10RR by taking his second win of the weekend today and his fourth in succession. Tom Sykes (Kawasaki Racing Team) had his best finish of the year in second place, in a second race, which was shortened to 16-laps after a red flag was shown early in the first attempted running.
After taking pole position and the first race win at the Chang International Circuit Jonathan Rea had to make two race starts today, just like his peer group. In the only race finish that mattered Jonathan scored his fourth win in a row, giving him a perfect score of 100 points so far and a championship lead of 30 over Chaz Davies.

Having won both Superpole contests this season, at Phillip Island and Chang, Rea has also grown his career win total to 42 after his second race success. His margin of victory in race two proved to be just over four seconds, from his own team-mate Sykes.

Sykes rode with consistency and determination again and in a copy of the Saturday’s race in Thailand he passed Marco Melandri right at the end, this time for second place and not third. A grandstand finish gave Tom his third podium of the season, and third place overall in the championship rankings, with a total of 62 points.

With the second race start based on where the riders finished the red flagged race, Rea and Sykes launched off the front and second rows respectively for the real 16-lap contest.

In the Manufacturers’ Standings, Kawasaki’s lead was extended to 24 points after two rounds. The next WorldSBK event will take place at Motorland Aragon in Spain, with racedays on Saturday 1st and Sunday 2nd April.

Jonathan Rea, stated: 

“The best start to a season ever in my career. It is important to maximise these points when we can because it is how I built my championships in the past. When we can win, make sure we win, and then we can try and consolidate. These four victories are nearly halfway to my win tally from last year already! It is a good start and I just feel comfortable on the bike. We took the bike set-up we had from Phillip Island to here and it just pretty much worked. That is unheard of, so I have a good bond with the bike. There are still some areas we need to improve for the coming races but KHI are working hard on this. We expect to improve the bike again in the next races.”


Tom Sykes, stated: 

“The race win was not on today but second place was, so it was all about making the smartest move possible at the end. I could see Marco had some limitations so on the last lap I knew I had a margin. He was faster than me in the twisty section before the last corner so I had to put the lap together. Finally on the last lap on my dashboard there was 1’33.7, which was the fastest of my whole race. We still have to find a little bit more from our package. I am slowly getting there and consistency has pretty much been there. We keep closing the gap but we need to try and close it a bit faster.”