In a race where Jonathan Rea had to give a lot of himself and all his bike and tyre performance to make sure he took his 66th career win, a rider new to winning at this level this year, Michael van der Mark, came closest to capitalising on Rea’s early-lap hold-ups.

After scoring a fortuitous podium on raceday one, Sunday’s was R1 Yamaha ride was much more controlled and confident.  

“We changed a little bit on the bike,” said van der Mark. “I changed to the big front tyre, and I think it was better. You know, it is quite even (between the tyres sizes), but this morning again I tried it and we thought maybe with the hotter conditions, it was better.

"We changed a little bit on the suspension but not a lot. We were quite fast yesterday and you do not want to change too much on the bike. I am happy we made some changes and at least I felt more comfortable on the bike compared to yesterday. This was the biggest improvement for myself. Especially on the entry of the corners. Every lap I was closing t front somewhere on Saturday, but now felt it coming, because I had more feeling from the front.”

One aspect of VDM’s second place that did have a slight air of good fortune was how he passed the Ducati pairing of Davies and Melandri.

“They were battling and to be honest, I was not quicker. I was behind Marco and Chaz and I was not quicker than them. We were doing the same lap time but as they battled I got closer and closer. It was ten laps to go or something so I did not want to attack then. I was pretty sure that they were overtaking so much, someone would run wide at turn one.”

He saw his moment and got two for the brake pressure of one. “So I was just doing my normal braking,” explained VDM. “ At the point where I saw them both run wide I released my brake and carried a lot more speed. For sure I wanted to overtake one, so to overtake both at once - it was a nice present.”

On his better Sunday bike set-up VDM even fancied a go at Rea, who was having to ride hard to keep the tall Dutchman behind him. “Yes, a few times,” he said about trying to make a move on Rea. “In some areas he was quicker and I was quicker in other areas, but at the end we all know it is Johnny and how strong his package is, and himself. I knew that if he did not make any mistakes, that was it. But of course I tried to push as much as possible and also he did, because I saw him pushing a lot.”

Van der Mark made up points on Chaz Davies in each race, and is now only 20 points behind the factory Ducati rider in the fight for second place overall.