Rea Takes Positives From Assen

Jonathan Rea left the Dutch WorldSBK Round encouraged with his potential despite an overall tricky weekend. He finished fifth in the 10-lap Tissot Superpole race early today but was left chasing the field in WorldSBK race two after falling and re-joining, eventually finishing in 19th place.

Setting the stage for race two, the Superpole Race this morning was another chance for Rea to capitalise on his pole position from Saturday and the #65 Yamaha R1 WorldSBK rider was right in the thick of the fight from start to finish – only dropping back to P5 on the penultimate lap and missing the podium by 0.5 of a second. The first fully-dry session of the weekend delivered the first of two incredibly thrilling WorldSBK races for the 56,000-strong crowd present today. 

Rea got away from the line well at the start of Race 2 and was running fifth at the end of the opening lap. Unfortunately, he found it difficult to use the R1’s strengths early on due to a harder tyre choice. On lap 10 he was taken down at Turn one by a crashing Alex Lowes whilst running in eighth place. Jonathan was uninjured and was able to remount and rejoin the race. However, he was now running at the back of the field but continued to take the chequered flag in 19th place. 

With no racing scheduled for May, Pata Prometeon Yamaha have nearly eight weeks to continue working to fight for podiums and race wins. The team and Yamaha will complete two performance tests in the time between now and Round 4 of the 2024 FIM World Superbike Championship, one each at Cremona and Misano late next month. 

Jonathan Rea – SPRC: P5 / Race 2: P19

“It’s been my best weekend to date with Yamaha, so we have to take the positives! Slowly but surely I’m understanding the bike and how to take profit of the Yamaha R1’s strengths. I also never rode the bike in the wet, so that Superpole session was good and the result was great! All weekend it has not been the ideal conditions to prepare a race plan. We didn’t understand tyre choices from the start because we didn’t have many laps in the dry, so with experience and instinct made our decisions. Potentially in Race 2, I should have gone with the SCX rear tyre but I was nervous about degradation with the cold conditions. It would have been a gamble for me having not tried it all weekend, but I really struggled with the harder SC0 on the edge of the tyre to get the first part of acceleration off the corner. I felt myself that I was “there” but I ended up off the end of the front group and lost the tow to Iannone. Finally, Alex tried a pass but unfortunately crashed in front of me and down I went with him. Frustrating, because you don’t need to be kicked when you’re down – but we really can take some positives now. We have a couple of tests coming up and a lot of time for both myself to move forward and also for the team and Yamaha. It’s clear that we need to take a step forward but encouraging that both Loka and Remy had such strong races. We look forward to Misano now, it’s a track that I enjoy and we know the Yamaha R1 is quite strong there so hopefully more positives to come.”