“I’m not so good and don’t understand why” - Rea facing last sector problems

The six-time WorldSBK champion is facing an uphill battle heading into today’s qualifying and Race 1, after several issues plagued him en route to a disappointing P9. 

Rea made a slow start to FP1 and was as low down as 14th before gradually making his way up the leaderboard. 

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However, progress soon stopped once he broke into the top ten, with acceleration being one of the main issues.

Asked about the improvements that needed to be made for today's first of three WorldSBK races, Rea said: "Generally, all over but for me, I need to finish the corners a bit better, and for the acceleration areas, the bike needs to accelerate more. 

"I’m really struggling in sector two which is where the acceleration towards Quercia and the exit before Tromonto. In the last sector, I’m not so good and I don’t understand why. 

"We need to go over the data compared to previous years because I felt better there last year. Honestly, I haven’t looked through the classification so, I don’t know the pace of the others. 

"The goal is always the podium and try to be as close to it as possible and pick up good points for my championship and try to improve the bike." 

Unlike his rivals who tested at Misano recently, Rea, who himself completed one day of private testing alongside teammate Alex Lowes at Jerez less than two weeks ago, was also trying to get up to speed which slowed him down at the beginning of the day.

But with that said, Rea was not overly worried as his current level of performance was where he expected to be. 

Rea added: "It was a little bit difficult getting up to speed after missing the test a few weeks ago, which meant that we had to find the way a bit this morning. In the afternoon, we focused on a long run to see how the tyre would be for the race. 

"We had some issues in FP1 which took time to understand why we weren’t performing so well, but once we understood that, we were able to work away. 

"These are things we could’ve ironed out at the test to really understand. It was a learning day. For day one, we are where we expected to be."