ata Honda rider Jonathan Rea finished in seventh and fifth positions in Sunday’s two seventh-round World Superbike championship races at Misano World Circuit ‘Marco Simoncelli’ in Italy.

With temperatures hovering around 30˚C and the track in the mid-40s, the two races were won by Tom Sykes as Rea, 27, fought to harness as many championship points as possible after a testing race weekend. At the halfway point of the season, he holds fourth place in the standings.

His Pata Honda team-mate Leon Haslam endured an eventful raceday, finishing 10th in race one after an electronics glitch just three laps from the end. The 30-year-old crashed on the last corner of the 4.226km Misano circuit in race two but minimal damage to his CBR1000RR Fireblade SP allowed him to re-mount and take 12th place at the flag.

Jonathan Rea - 7th and 5thIt’s been a disappointing weekend for me because it feels like we’ve made zero progresshere. It was frustrating to be unable to pinpoint and fix the problems we’ve had and, while Idon’t want to sound like a broken record, I feel a bit like one with my comments in thegarage. We were able to salvage a top five in race two after some brave passing in the fastparts of the circuit but the group at the front was too far away. I can only ride the bike aswell as it’s working, but I want to be able to race it again. We can’t just hope that the nextround will be better; we need to evaluate what’s been going wrong and try to find somedifferent solutions. It’s been frustrating for the whole team because I know we haven’t beenable to get the best out of the CBR this weeken d. I know that on the right day and in theright environment, the bike is capable of much, much more. The whole team feels likewe’re under-achieving right now so we need to do our homework and fix things as quickly aspossible.

Leon Haslam - 10th and 12thI got a bad start in race one and got stuck for a couple of laps before working my way up.By then, I was about four seconds off the group in front, which included Johnny [Rea] and Ifelt like I was holding my own. I had a few little issues but then, with three laps to go, theECU seemed to just cut-out. I pulled off the track, re-booted it using the kill-switch andmanaged to get going again to finish tenth. In race two my start was better but I had a bitof a yo-yo race, losing time in some corners and making it up again in others. I was righton the group that went up to fifth but then had another issue that led to the crash. We needto assess what that problem was and go from there. I think we’ve made some progress thisweekend and I was able to do some better lap times in the races but there’s more work todo before Portimao.

Pieter Breddels - technical co-ordinatorLeon was riding quite well today and doing some decent lap times. The bike had atechnical issue just before the end of race one, which was disappointing for everyone. Inrace two, he was in the second group and had a small crash, which he was able to recoverfrom to finish 12th. The results are not satisfying of course, but again we made progress.Leon is closer to his team-mate and we’ll take that positive to Portimao, which is a trackthat he likes. We wanted to battle for the podium here again but Jonathan had too manyissues and it took us too long to make a good setting for him. We have a lot of work to doand we need to aim for the Portimao podium with him because it’s one of his favouritetracks and we know how well he and the bike can go there.

Race 1 Results

1 Tom Sykes 33m46.923s GBR KAWASAKI Kawasaki Racing Team2 Loris Baz +5.012 FRA KAWASAKI Kawasaki Racing Team3 Marco Melandri +6.417 ITA APRILIA Aprilia Racing Team4 Chaz Davies +7.783 GBR DUCATI Ducati Superbike Team5 Sylvain Guintoli +16.248 FRA APRILIA Aprilia Racing Team6 Toni Elias +17.399 ESP APRILIA Red Devils Roma7 Jonathan Rea +21.162 GBR HONDA Pata Honda8 Davide Guigliano +26.393 ITA DUCATI Ducati Superbike Team9 Eugene Laverty +26.842 IRL SUZUKI Voltcom Crescent Suzuki10 Leon Haslam +40.600 GBR HONDA Pata HondaRace 2 Results

1 Tom Sykes 33m55.695s GBR KAWASAKI Kawasaki Racing Team2 Loris Baz +3.083 FRA KAWASAKI Kawasaki Racing Team3 Luca Scassa +3.413 ITA KAWASAKI Team Pedercini4 Sylvain Guintoli +5.092 FRA APRILIA Aprilia Racing Team5 Jonathan Rea +18.975 GBR HONDA Pata Honda6 Toni Elias +19.365 ESP APRILIA Red Devils Roma7 Eugene Laverty +20.177 IRL SUZUKI Voltcom Crescent Suzuki8 Alex Lowes +20.439 GBR SUZUKI Voltcom Crescent Suzuki9 Davide Guigliano +33.820 ITA DUCATI Ducati Superbike Team10 David Salom +42.156 ESP KAWASAKI Kawasaki Racing Team12 Leon Haslam +51.993 GBR HONDA Pata HondaChampionship Standings

1 Tom Sykes 251 pts GBR KAWASAKI Kawasaki Racing Team2 Sylvain Guintoli 212 pts FRA APRILIA Aprilia Racing Team3 Loris Baz 210 pts FRA KAWASAKI Kawasaki Racing Team4 Jonathan Rea 199 pts GBR HONDA Pata Honda5 Marco Melandri 179 pts ITA APRILIA Aprilia Racing Team6 Chaz Davies 143 pts GBR DUCATI Ducati Superbike Team7 Davide Guigliano 111 pts ITA DUCATI Ducati Superbike Team8 Toni Elias 109 pts ESP APRILIA Red Devils Roma9 Eugene Laverty 106 pts IRL SUZUKI Voltcom Crescent Suzuki10 Leon Haslam 99 pts GBR HONDA Pata Honda