Jonathan Rea is an Assen monster. Every year he has raced at the Dutch circuit - save for 2013 - he has won at least one WorldSBK race.

Between 2015 to 2017, the works Kawasaki man dominated by winning both races - it was like shooting fish in an ice-cream tub with a Desert Eagle.

But as Rea boarded his plane to Amsterdam on Wednesday morning, he told bikesportnews.com it was going to be different this weekend and he had absolutely ‘zero expectations’ even though Assen was a place where he is pretty much unbeatable.

“Well, until now yeah. I am excited about it, we know the bike works well there. There are certain aspects to the track - a bit like Portimao - where the rider can make a difference,” he said

“After the last three rounds, we’ve got zero expectations. I don’t want to feel let down, we know we are really up against it this year, we haven’t been the strongest, so we have to regroup and close the gap a little bit.

Fifteen seconds is too much. Hopefully we can be a bit closer. But watching the races of years gone past, Lowes, van der Mark and Leon are all strong there. It could end up being a big dogfight.

“It’s important to work on the bike so I’m confident and feeling good. We are missing that little spark we had last year. When you have that it becomes a little easier and the momentum is with Alvaro at the moment.”

In the last four seasons, Rea has had it all his own way and has rarely been in a race-long scrap. Currently, someone else is riding away at the front but the podium fighting has meant Rea has discovered a few things about the new-ish Pirelli which means he could worry less about tyre conservation and more about staying with the Ducati in the opening laps.

“It’s a strange one because I felt good in the second race when I had to fight, I had a lot of traction - the tyre was spinning but it was still going forwards. When I was in the scrap with two or three guys, my bike felt good.

Unlike in years gone past with the smaller Pirelli where you had to look after it, the bigger one is consistent so maybe I can push it more. That is something we are going to explore this weekend.

“We’re going to look at front-end braking stability too. Our bike needs to turn more naturally - like the Yamaha - but I find that when we make a stable bike it doesn’t stop. The goalposts have changed now and we to change the bike for me to ride in a different way.”