Jonathan Rea concedes the performance gap between him and runaway World Superbike championship leader Alvaro Bautista is too big despite fighting back for his seventh consecutive second place behind the Spanish rider.

The reigning World Superbike champion battled from a lowly starting grid slot of 10th place, following a mix-up in qualifying meaning he missed out on his final run, to take the runner-up spot but 15 seconds off Bautista.

Rea was engaged in a race-long fight for second place against Chaz Davies and Alex Lowes, allowing Bautista to escape unchallenged, but with a huge deficit to his Spanish rival the Northern Irish rider concedes the gap remains too great.

“The race position today could not be any better and we achieved the maximum, even from tenth place on the grid,” Rea said. “It was an eventful race for me and very exciting, with a lot of passes.

“All in all, we are very happy with the points and being on the podium, but still a little bit disappointed and bemused by the gap to the front, which is too big.”

Rea explained the qualifying confusion as a mistake over time management when both he and team-mate Leon Haslam went out too late for their only run on the Pirelli qualifying tyre.

“In Superpole we made some mistakes as a team, both myself and the guys, from a time management side. We planned for two laps on the qualifying tyre but I was released a little bit too late then I made a mistake on my first lap and sat up in sector one, thinking to conserve the tyre for one last effort,” he said.

“But, when I came across the line, I realised my Superpole lap time was from the race tyre in the earlier laps.”

It means Rea will start from 10th place in the World Superbike sprint race with the result from the top nine places deciding the grid order for the front three rows in race two.