Reigning WorldSBK Champion Jonathan Rea says he had no warning save for some vibration before his rear tyre exploded at the bottom of Donington Park’s Craner Curves in the first WorldSBK race this afternoon.
The points leader was in a dice with eventual winner and team-mate Tom Sykes for the podium top spot but with five laps to go, he started to feel a vibration from the back of his Kawasaki ZX-10RR before it let go in fourth gear and Rea was spat into the gravel.
“It felt like the tyre came off the rim or exploded or something. It started with a vibration so there was some sort of problem as about a lap before Tom passed me, there was a lot of vibration into corners off the gas. Then when he passed me, it got worse and worse but I just wanted to finish the race but with hindsight it would have saved my bike,” said Rea, speaking to bikesportnews.com straight after the incident.
“IIt’s like there was a sniper in the crowd or something. I have to thank Alpinestars and Arai as I banged my head pretty hard and the suit really kept by body intact. It was certainly scary.”
Pirelli have withdrawn the A option tyres that Rea was using on safety grounds:
Pirelli, in agreement with FIM, Dorna and MOTUL FIM World Superbike Championship Race Direction, has decided to pull the rear V0602 development solution (option A) from the tyre allocation available to riders in the WorldSBK category for the Donington Park round. The decision was made following what happened in Race 1 to the rear tyre of Jonathan Rea (Kawasaki Racing Team) who abruptly lost pressure in the twenty-first lap, causing the rider to crash.
Although specifying that the solution being pulled has not shown any problems up to now, being successfully used by many riders in both Race 1 and in Race 2 of the Imola round and by Tom Sykes, Alex Lowes and Marco Melandri in Race 1 at Donington Park, because at the moment it has not been possible to ascertain the causes (whether with the tyre or due to external factors) that resulted in the abrupt deflation, in the primary interest of rider safety and while awaiting further analyses on the tyre being investigated, Pirelli and Dorna have therefore agreed to pull this tyre from the allocation available to the riders.
In compensation, Pirelli will provide each rider with an additional standard SC0 compound tyre (option A), thereby increasing the number of available tyres in this solution from 8 to 9 for the Donington Park round.
