Jonathan Rea is looking to bounce back from his first winless weekend with his fourth double of the 2015 World Superbike season at Portimao on Sunday. The championship leader was beaten to both victories at Donington Park by Kawasaki teammate Tom Sykes but has a strong recent record at the Algarve circuit and is planning a fightback this weekend.
“I have been soaking up the pre-TT atmosphere here in the Isle of Man before I head off to Portimão. It is a circuit that I really enjoy and it requires quite a lot of different techniques in a few areas. It is a cool place to go in general and the weather should be really nice at this time of year. I am looking forward to riding the Kawasaki there because I have some really good memories from previous race weekends. Now we have a really good way of working with the KRT Ninja ZX-10R and we need to keep working together, Pere and all the crew, to really understand the bike and the track on Friday and then build towards two strong races. We did not test at Portimão in the winter because we did a lot of testing at Motorland and Jerez. I took a race win at Portimão last year, in the wet, which was very nice. This year is a new year so we will just try and build on what we have done already. My target at Portimão is to go for both races.”
Sykes heads to Portugal as the form rider after his dominant double at Donington Park and the 2013 champion wants to see his recent progress continue this weekend.
“I feel good after the Donington Park round, really happy with the way we approached the weekend in general. The way we evaluated everything and moved forward paid off. We have a good track record at Donington but we did nothing special. We had made some small steps at previous events, turned a corner at Imola and that carried on to Donington. I needed to get my season going and in the last four races we have been second, second, first and first. So I have felt more at home on the bike and we have had been doing a lot of points scoring. I feel I have a bike set-up where if I get passed I can re-pass, and that really excites me. I feel we have made improvements in general and we have a fairly decent track record at a number of the circuits coming up so I feel we have the set-up heading in the right direction in the nick of time. I won a race at Portimão last year and I am really looking forward to heading to Portugal and experiencing the KRT Ninja ZX-10R there.”
