Jonathan Rea took fourth place in the first of today’s two fifth-round World Superbike championship races at Donington Park in the UK, but there was not much else for his Pata Honda team to celebrate this weekend.

Today’s two 23-lap races were won by British rider Tom Sykes, but neither featured Rea’s Pata Honda team-mate Leon Haslam, who was withdrawn following morning warm-up after consultation with the team's management and medical staff.

Haslam broke his leg badly in a practice crash at Assen in The Netherlands four weeks ago and had undergone intensive therapy to compete at Donington, which is his home round. However, despite qualifying on the fifth row of the grid, his discomfort during warm-up prompted the team’s decision.

Rea had shown potential during yesterday’s practice session, qualifying in fourth place on the grid, which is where he finished race one. However, an electronics sensor failure just before race two, which restricted him to eleventh place at the flag after 23 difficult laps of the 4.023km Donington circuit.

Jonathan Rea – 4th and 11th

I was pretty happy with my pace at the start of race one but, as soon as my tyre started to go, off the electronics were cutting too severely and I lost a lot of pace. I even struggled to compete with Laverty and Guintoli as they came past. Race two was a complete disaster. Already, on the sighting lap, I told the guys that we had a sensor problem on the traction control. They said there wasn’t enough time to fix it so I went out on a bike that I was really unsure of. In reality it was cutting way, way too much power and I even tried to turn the traction control off, but it wouldn’t turn completely off. It was the worst 23 laps I’ve ever ridden. I’m really frustrated after all the work we’ve done – we struggled for dry time at the start of the weekend but made some inroads during warm-up this morning and I felt good in race one. I feel like we should have been on the podium twice today.

Leon Haslam - DNS

Looking at the guys ride around Donington and knowing what I’ve done here in the past makes it kind of frustrating to sit and watch the races in the motorhome. Jonathan proved in race one that the bike was capable of fighting for the podium and I feel I might have been up there. There are a lot of ifs and buts, but I think it was the right decision not to ride. Even though I haven’t been riding today, the leg is still quite sore so I’ll get bit more physio, have a few days off, and see how we get on. The surgeon who operated on me says the best thing would be a few days on a warm beach so I’m going to look at an early flight out to Portimao and continue the work out there.

Pieter Breddels – technical co-ordinator

Jonathan got a really good start in race one and moved into second behind Tom Sykes. He could keep in touch with Tom for almost half the race, which was very good, but in the end he dropped off a little and finished just off the podium in fourth. We were getting ready for that podium finish in race two when we got a problem with the sensor on the grid. We thought we had solved the problem by bypassing the sensor but it didn’t work out and that was the end of his race. Jonathan did not have a bike to compete with at all and I’m very sorry this happened because I think it robbed him of podium finish. Both he and the bike showed potential again this weekend so we’ll look forward to Portimao, when we’ll get Leon back on the bike as well.

Event results - Round 5 - Race 1

1 Tom Sykes 34m10.881s GBR KAWASAKI Kawasaki Racing Team
2 Marco Melandri 2.379 ITA BMW BMW Motorrad GoldBet SBK Team
3 Sylvain Guintoli 3.808 FRA APRILIA Aprilia Racing Team
4 Jonathan Rea 6.760 GBR HONDA Pata Honda
5 Loris Baz 13.649 FRA KAWASAKI Kawasaki Racing Team
6 Davide Giugliano 15.551 ITA APRILIA Althea Racing
7 Eugene Laverty 17.453 IRL APRILIA Aprilia Racing Team
8 Chaz Davies 19.138 GBR BMW BMW Motorrad GoldBet SBK Team
9 Jules Cluzel 27.738 FRA SUZUKI Fixi Crescent Suzuki
10 Michel Fabrizio 30.817 ITA APRILIA Red Devils Roma
11 Ayrton Badovini 31.611 ITA DUCATI Team Ducati Alstare
12 Carlos Checa 31.816 SPA DUCATI Team Ducati Alstare
13 Niccolo Canepa 31.930 ITA DUCATI Team Ducati Alstare
14 Max Neukirchner 43.025 GER DUCATI MR-Racing
15 Vittorio Iannuzzo 4 Laps ITA BMW Grillini DENTALMATIC SBK Team
16 Federico Sandi DNF ITA KAWASAKI Pedercini Team
17 Alexander Lundh DNF SWE KAWASAKI Pedercini Team
18 Leon Camier DNF GBR SUZUKI Fixi Crescent Suzuki

Event results - Round 5 - Race 2

1 Tom Sykes 34m06.921s GBR KAWASAKI Kawasaki Racing Team
2 Sylvain Guintoli 8.035 FRA APRILIA Aprilia Racing Team
3 Eugene Laverty 10.738 IRL APRILIA Aprilia Racing Team
4 Davide Giugliano 12.257 ITA APRILIA Althea Racing
5 Marco Melandri 15.976 ITA BMW BMW Motorrad GoldBet SBK Team
6 Chaz Davies 16.475 GBR BMW BMW Motorrad GoldBet SBK Team
7 Loris Baz 27.524 FRA KAWASAKI Kawasaki Racing Team
8 Niccolo Canepa 30.186 ITA DUCATI Team Ducati Alstare
9 Jules Cluzel 30.501 FRA SUZUKI Fixi Crescent Suzuki
10 Michel Fabrizio 30.885 ITA APRILIA Red Devils Roma
11 Jonathan Rea 31.529 GBR HONDA Pata Honda
12 Max Neukirchner 46.782 GER DUCATI MR-Racing
13 Leon Camier 54.509 GBR SUZUKI Fixi Crescent Suzuki
14 Federico Sandi 1'05.789 ITA KAWASAKI Pedercini Team
15 Alexander Lundh 1'20.431 SWE KAWASAKI Pedercini Team
16 Vittorio Iannuzzo 1'20.719 ITA BMW Grillini DENTALMATIC SBK Team
17 Ayrton Badovini DNF ITA DUCATI Team Ducati Alstare

Championship standings

1 Sylvain Guintoli 173 pts FRA APRILIA Aprilia Racing Team
2 Tom Sykes 169 pts GBR KAWASAKI Kawasaki Racing Team
3 Eugene Laverty 150 pts IRL APRILIA Aprilia Racing Team
4 Marco Melandri 127 pts ITA BMW BMW Motorrad GoldBet SBK Team
5 Chaz Davies 112 pts GBR BMW BMW Motorrad GoldBet SBK Team
6 Loris Baz 95 pts FRA KAWASAKI Kawasaki Racing Team
7 Jonathan Rea 89 pts GBR HONDA Pata Honda
8 Michel Fabrizio 86 pts ITA APRILIA Red Devils Roma
9 Davide Giugliano 72 pts ITA APRILIA Althea Racing
10 Jules Cluzel 55 pts FRA SUZUKI Fixi Crescent Suzuki
11 Leon Camier 49 pts GBR SUZUKI Fixi Crescent Suzuki
12 Max Neukirchner 45 pts GER DUCATI MR-Racing
13 Ayrton Badovini 37 pts ITA DUCATI Team Ducati Alstare
14 Carlos Checa 33 pts SPA DUCATI Team Ducati Alstare
15 Leon Haslam 29 pts GBR HONDA Pata Honda
16 Ivan Clementi 14 pts ITA BMW HTM Racing
17 Federico Sandi 14 pts ITA KAWASAKI Pedercini Team
18 Niccolo Canepa 11 pts ITA DUCATI Team Ducati Alstare
19 Fabrizio Lai 8 pts FRA KAWASAKI Pedercini Team
20 Alexander Lundh 8 pts SWE KAWASAKI Pedercini Team
21 Vittorio Iannuzzo 7 pts ITA BMW Grillini DENTALMATIC SBK Team
22 Glen Allerton 6 pts AUS BMW Next Gen Motorsports
23 Jamie Stauffer 4 pts AUS HONDA Team Honda Racing
24 Mark Aitchinson 2 pts AUS DUCATI Team Effenbert Liberty Racing
25 Kosuke Akiyoshi 2 pts JPN HONDA Pata Honda

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