Six rounds into the World Superbike season and America has a winner in the class once again. Nicky Hayden’s Sepang success was the highlight of this passed weekend in Malaysia, but there was plenty more to the weekend than just hearing the Star Spangled Banner played.
Jonathan Rea added some more points to his Superbike Championship lead, with Chaz Davies failing to cope with the torrential rain in Race 2, which in-turn soaked up some of his championship momentum.
Tom Sykes too struggled with the changing conditions in Malaysia, showing both great and lackluster results for his weekend in Malaysia. Now 70 points behind his teammate, it will take a miracle for Sykes to wear the #1 plate again. That could make him a very dangerous man, come race day.
Rea Pads His Championship Advantage
In Malaysia, Jonathan Rea extended his championship lead over Chaz Davies by seven points.
Having signed a two-year contract extension prior to the start of action in Malaysia, the Northern Irishman finished on the podium in both races, and while still struggling to find the perfect setup with his Kawasaki Ninja ZX-10R, it was another strong showing.
Rea had no answers for Tom Sykes and Nicky Hayden in terms of outright pace for the race wins in Sepang, but after Race 1 he made clear that his “target is Chaz and outscoring him.”
With that regard it was mission accomplished for Rea. Despite a relative lean spell for Rea, he is now four races without a win, but with a lead of 42 points, as the championship reaches its midpoint, there seems little reason for Rea to be concerned.
“The plan at this stage is not to just focus on the championship,” said Rea. “The focus is on trying to build a strong package so that at the end of the season we can fight with all our rivals at a more comfortable level.”
“But I’m obviously happy with our overall position right now in the championship. I also want to say congratulations to Nicky; it’s great for World Superbike to see another rider and manufacturer get a race win.”
Changes to the Kawasaki for this weekend saw a change in weight distribution to the ZX-10R. With the weight lowered and the center of gravity modified, the balance of the bike changed in Malaysia. As a result Rea never felt perfectly at ease with the bike, but his comfort was still enough for a podium in both races.
“I feel like we’re testing at this point in the season. We’ve changed our engine character quite a bit again this weekend. We pretty much lost FP1 due to the dirty track conditions, so we didn’t have a lot of time,” said Rea.
“We used FP2 with our best setup; but for Race 1, we tried to further improve it and went backwards. I’d have preferred a dry Race 2 to get more information.”
“The engine character is good now, so we just need to understand the weight balance of the bike more. It feels like something we should have been doing in the winter tests. But with the new ZX-10R we started with a bike in a completely different direction to last year’s bike.”
The last 18 months have seen Rea lead the championship without interruption, and while the dominance of 2015 is a thing of the past, his consistency is still the deciding advantage over his rivals.
Rea’s ability to adapt to a bike not quite to his liking has been hugely impressive in 2016.
Last year the Kawasaki was a perfect foil for Rea, whereas this season he has had to consistently adapt to the new bike. The significant upgrade to the production version of the ZX-10R has meant that Rea and his crew chief, Pere Riba, have been fighting a battle to find a base setting.
After last year’s success and ability to instantly gel with the bike, this season has been in starked contrast for Rea, however the results have been the same.
With 12 races in the book for 2016, Rea has 12 podiums on his card and it’s that consistency that makes it very difficult to see him beaten to the championship, despite the raw speed of Chaz Davies and Ducati.
Davies Left Chasing Giugliano
In a rare twist of fate, Chaz Davies was left chasing the tail of his Ducati teammate, Davide Giugliano, in Race 2 at Sepang after the championship contender struggled with his front end in the rain.
It was a challenging weekend for Davies; with a podium in Race 1, but never looking to have the pace of the Kawasaki riders.
Speaking after the wet second race, Davies was clearly disappointed with fourth, but he was clearly aware that it could have been a much worse weekend for him than how it played out.
“It was a strange race, because with seven laps to go I thought we could win, but the next lap I realized we were in trouble,” Davies revealed. “The track conditions were pretty [constant], so the tires were not too difficult to manage, but we struggled with grip in corner exit.”
“I had to work the front quite a bit to make up for that, and its performance dropped all of a sudden. I’m semi-happy with the final outcome. Obviously I would have liked to have done more, but we were in contention for most of the race.”
“In wet races anything can happen, and we only lost three points in the championship. We’ll move forward in Donington.”
While Davies was struggling for front end grip Giugliano was struggling to get through to the front. The Roman made some daring overtaking moves, the most significant on Davies, where Ducati could easily have had a repeat situation of Argentina MotoGP.
“Nicky was very fast on the first lap and for me at the end it was too much risk to close the gap,” said Giugliano. “It’s a beautiful second position, and I wanted to win, but this result was so important.”
“It was very difficult to race without any wet practice, but it was also a lot of fun! The first corner was an unknown….but so was the second and third corner! Step-by-step it was possible to see the conditions and push more. It was a fun race!”
“When I was fighting with Chaz he was very fast in braking. It was not-so-easy to pass and I didn’t want to fuck things up! Chaz is second in the championship, but I want to go in front and try to catch Nicky. I think I did a good race and at this moment it was so important.”
It could be very important for the Italian’s future, with the rider market having started to turn and both Ducati riders out of contract.
Both Sides of Sykes on Show
Can Sykes make these tires last? That was the question being asked by almost everyone at Sepang but ultimately in Race 1 the 2013 World Champion proved again that on his day he is a sensational, almost unbeatable, rider in World Superbike. However, those days haven’t been coming often enough for Sykes.
Saturday in Sepang will however be another day when we look back and see the potential strength of Sykes, where he utterly dominated proceedings and waltzed away from the field.
Having fallen out of championship contention Sykes can now relax and try and win as many races as possible. A double success next time out in Donington Park is not to be discounted, and in fact Sykes will start the weekend as the clear favorite.
When he gets into the right frame of mind, and has the bike working as he needs it, Sykes is superb, and after Race 1 he spoke about how it feels for him when he has the bike in the zone.
“I really enjoyed the race,” Sykes said. “The bike was giving me plenty of warning, well in advance. We were able to respond in some laps in a good way and overall I am very, very grateful for all the hard work from my crew because they have worked overtime.”
“We have struggled to some degree over 12 months now, and this is the first time we have come a bit closer. The fact is that we were able to be consistent for race distance, which is very nice.”
In Race 2 however, Sykes once again fell down the order in the wet conditions, with a lack of confidence, and showed once again that consistency is the Achilles heel of the Englishman.
Photos: WorldSBK
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