SBK | Test Jerez Day 2: Rea, “The first sensations with this team were fantastic”

SBK Test Jerez Yamaha – Jonathan Rea closed the second day of testing at the Jerez circuit with the third fastest time.

Today the Northern Irishman had the chance to express himself at his best with his new R1 and with the team, as the early winter Spanish sun allowed more time on the track. Completing 68 laps after an early lunch, Rea took third fastest on his final lap just before the end of the test – with fellow Yamaha rider Remy Gardner (GYTR GRT Yamaha) setting the fastest lap with a 1: 38.448. Rea's next chance to get to know his new R1 WorldSBK better will be on 20-21 November here in Jerez, alongside teammate Andrea Locatelli – with a key focus on 2024 development with Yamaha engineers.

Statements Jonathan Rea Test Jerez Yamaha

“My first feelings with this team were fantastic, ever since I agreed to move. Both the team and Yamaha were really welcoming and made everything easy. The first test was just to get familiar with the bike – it was a bit of a shock, I had many different sensations than I'm used to – but in a positive way! The R1 is very easy to use: not necessarily easy to reach the absolute limit, but easy to drive. It generates a lot of traction which encourages you to go fast and inspires confidence. You can hit the gas and use the power of the bike – it's nice and now I can see how Toprak was riding like that, and Loka has also been so competitive this year. Everything is fine! Just a nice first contact with the set-up and the team, so I expect that next time we can delve deeper into this. Step by step today we tried a few different things, fork specifics, different tire combinations so we could understand how Yamaha uses different compounds: I could see from the past that Yamaha was able to maximize the SCX tire. I required a different electronics setup, but not too much. I'm using the current "base setting" of the R1 and in the next tests we will start working on the development parts. It was a really good experience both days and the R1 feels more like my bike, especially as we were lucky with the weather this afternoon and got through more than we expected. I'm sure I could wake up tomorrow and even more performance would come but now I have to wait a couple of weeks...! Thanks everyone – I really enjoyed it!”