Jonathan Rea made a disappointing start to his third defence of the World Superbike title with a fifth and second places at Phillip Island.

’My bike’s rear tyre had a blister from around lap 16 in race one on Saturday, which was really unfortunate because until that point I’d felt quite good with the bike.’ explained Rea.

’We have been changing the settings quite a lot to feel really comfortable. We could not make it happen. The vibrations were that much that I kept thinking I was going to crash, so I just nursed it through all the lefts and finished the race to salvage some points.’

As a safety precaution to make sure that the race tyre options would go the full race distance, the second 22-lapper on Sunday was split into two parts. Riders were forced to stop for a new rear tyre during a window of three laps in the middle of the race

Rea was with the front group from the off and took over the lead on lap 20. With a lower rev limit of 14,100rpm this year for the Ninja ZX-10RR, under new technical rules for the class, he could not quite make his last lap leading position count at the end of the long straight.

Despite leading into the final corner he was beaten by 0.021 seconds by Marco Melandri on the factory Ducati to complete an opening double.

’We struggled with fourth gear all weekend. It was too long for the final corner and we didn’t have enough drive on the exit. I could not get it done today.

’I also made a bit of a mess of my pit exit. I completely forgot to change into second gear to release the pit rev limiter and lost track position.’

l Round two is at Buriram, Thailand on March 24-25.