Jonathan Rea – WSB countdown diary – Day 4

With the two day World Superbike test at Phillip Island kicking off tomorrow, Jonathan Rea has continued to make the most of his time and has clearly settled into the Australian way of life. He didn’t manage to get to any BBQ’s today but he did learn how to surf along with Leon Haslam and Tommy Hill.

 “I made my early morning run to the bakery to pick up some breakfast and then headed to the internet café just to check out my emails and catch up on a few things.

“I headed to the track to sort out my kit and spoke to my team about the plan for tomorrow. There was actually a track day on and a mate of mine Cameron Donald, who I know from the roads, was there so I ended up having a bit of a crack with him.

“I headed back into Cowes for lunch and met up with Ron and Anne Haslam.”

Leon’s team had organised some surfing levels for the afternoon so myself, Leon, Tommy, Anthony West and Ron got stuck in. We had a couple of instructors and they guaranteed we would be standing by the end of the lesson and to be fair we were all up pretty early on. That meant they could teach us how to turn and follow the waves. We had a blast and I’m definitely going to hire a board next week and give it another go.

“The main place at Phillip Island is Cowes which basically consists of one street and a couple of roundabouts. There is an Italian restaurant called Pino’s, which over the years has become the epicentre for anyone in the paddock. I met up with Andrew (Pitt) and Troy (Corser) and then headed back to the apartment to watch a DVD.

“I’m looking forward to riding tomorrow. We’re going to start the day with the base setting from Portugal. We haven’t got loads to test, just a few electronics to introduce so I just want to go out there re-learn the track and hopefully build up to some good lap times.”