Jonathan Rea focusing on positives after ‘best round yet’ with Yamaha team

Rea claimed pole position at the legendary Dutch TT circuit on Saturday and clinched his best result of sixth in the weather-hit race, which was won by Italian rookie Nicholas Spinelli after his intermediate tyre choice paid off.

On Sunday, Rea improved to fifth in the Superpole race before he was left empty-handed in Race 2, when former Kawasaki team-mate Lowes crashed in front of him at Turn 1 after attempting a pass.

Rea re-joined the race but was outside the points in 19th place.

Reigning champion Alvaro Bautista won the Superpole race on the Aruba.it Ducati while Toprak Razgatlioglu (BMW Motorrad) got the better of the Spaniard to secure his third win of the season in the final race.

Rea, who is 15th in the standings after the first three rounds, said: “It’s been my best weekend to date with Yamaha, so we have to take the positives.

“Slowly but surely I’m understanding the bike and how to take profit of the Yamaha R1’s strengths. I also never rode the bike in the wet, so that Superpole session was good and the result was great.

“All weekend it has not been the ideal conditions to prepare a race plan. We didn’t understand tyre choices from the start because we didn’t have many laps in the dry, so with experience and instinct we made our decisions.

“Potentially in Race 2, I should have gone with the SCX rear tyre but I was nervous about degradation with the cold conditions.

“It would have been a gamble for me having not tried it all weekend, but I really struggled with the harder SC0 on the edge of the tyre to get the first part of acceleration off the corner.”

Rea was left frustrated after he was brought down because of Lowes’ crash but is now hoping to make further progress during testing before the next round at Misano in Italy in June.

“I felt myself that I was there but I ended up off the end of the front group and lost the tow to (Andrea) Iannone,” he said.

“Finally, Alex tried a pass but unfortunately crashed in front of me and down I went with him.

“Frustrating, because you don’t need to be kicked when you’re down – but we really can take some positives now.

“We have a couple of tests coming up and a lot of time for both myself to move forward and also for the team and Yamaha. It’s clear that we need to take a step forward but encouraging that both ‘Loka’ (Andrea Locatelli) and Remy (Gardner) had such strong races.”

Bautista leads the championship by six points from Razgatlioglu, with Nicolo Bulega in third, eight points further behind.

Meanwhile, Michael Dunlop and the TRT27 Racing Team finished 16th overall and seventh in the Superstock class at the legendary Le Mans 24-Hours race in France.

Dunlop was sharing riding duties over the weekend with Tom Ward, Tom Oliver and Ben Luxton.

The Ballymoney man previously competed at the event with the Honda TT Legends team in 2013.

Dunlop is preparing for the North West 200 next month and Isle of Man TT in June, where he needs one more win to equal the record of 26 victories held by his uncle Joey.