Good performance by Jonathan Rea at Domington Park with two third places in the first race and the Superpole on sunday

The good forecasts for the Kawasaki Racing Team came true at the Domington Park test, the home circuit of Jonathan Rea and Alex Lowes.

The good feelings during the practice session were followed by an excellent performance by Rea in the first race on Saturday, in which the UK rider managed to qualify third after fighting for the first position with his traditional rivals, Álvaro Bautista and Toprak Razgatlioglu. , first and second classified, ob board of their respective Ducati and Yamaha.

With this podium, Rea, in addition to recovering the good feelings on one of his favorites circuits, had 250 podium finishes in his racing career, 208 of them with Kawasaki, becoming the rider with the most podium finishes in SBK history.

His teammate Alex Lowes also put in a good performance in Saturday's race, finishing in sixth position.

The good work of the Rea-Kawasaki pairing at Donington Park was once again evident in the ten-lap Superpole race held on Sunday, in which they repeated third place and had serious options to get the first victory of the season, leading the second to last lap, but was passed by Toprak Razgatlioglu, the race winner, and then by Álvaro Bautista in the closing corners of the final lap, while Lowes moved back to sixth.

Rea's good performance could not be repeated in the second race on Sunday as, due to lack of rear-wheel riding problems, he lost his initial good rhythm and had to settle for fifth place after having been in second position during the first half of the race.

Lowes finished Sunday's second race in sixth position lapping in a tight group in which riders finishing fourth to ninth crossed the finish line within two seconds of each other.

The victory went to Álvaro Bautista, Ducati, who continues to be unstoppable followed by Razgatlioglu, Yamaha, and Danilo Petrucci who, at the controls of his Ducati, made his debut on the SBK podium. In the championship standings, Rea remains fourth, now with 163 points, while Lowes is seventh with 99 points.

STATEMENTS
Jonathan Rea (Kawasaki Racing Team Rider): “Getting my 250th podium finish makes me proud, but it also makes me feel very old! To have achieved all of this is beyond my wildest dreams. I just enjoy it and I hope there are many more to come… In the last race I had problems from the beginning with the traction of the rear tire and I realized very soon that I was going to the limit. Halfway through the race, when Álvaro overtook me, I had a lot of problems. It was very hard because the bike moved a lot”.
​Alex Lowes (Kawasaki Racing Team Rider): “The whole weekend has been very similar. We were quite fast, but when the tire dropped it was hard for us to keep up. Johnny manages it better, obviously, because he was fighting for the win, especially in the Superpole Race, but then he runs out of grip.”