Jonathan Rea’s first words after testing (and crashing) his new WorldSBK Yamaha
The six-time WorldSBK champion will swap Kawasaki for Yamaha next season, and debuted for his new manufacturer at Tuesday’s Jerez test.
A minor crash at Turn 13 did not stop Rea going fourth-fastest on a rain-interrupted day.
He posted a top time of 1’40.302s but was only able to complete 12 laps (the second-lowest out of every rider) due to the rain and his crash.
Rea’s best time was less than half-a-second from Remy Gardner, who was fastest on Tuesday.
Rea reflected on his crash: “I’m fine. I got unsighted by another rider on track and just opened up the last corner to square them off and hit a wet patch.
“Christened the bike, unfortunately.
“One that’s easy to take because I got caught out by a patch and not something over the limit.
“I think there’s still a lot of margin with the bike. It’s user friendly which gives me a good feeling.
“I had an amazing team before, I can’t speak highly enough about them and always as a rider, you think how it’s going to be.
“The Pata Yamaha Prometeon team have been incredible from my first dealings.
“Making me feel at home, everything from a very nice welcome dinner last night with me and my family. They’ve made me feel at home and really loved. How we’re working inside the box is really positive.
“It was fantastic to get the first laps on the R1 because you always have anticipation and maybe a preconception of how the bike’s going to be.
“I’ve been super excited until this morning, and then I got really nervous all of a sudden.
“I was thinking ‘can I be fast with the bike?’ or ‘what’s it going to feel like sitting on the bike during the bike fit?’.
“I got comfortable but the position felt strange, and I couldn’t imagine riding the bike.
“As soon as I exited pitlane, there were a lot of positives straight away I could take. We did three outings.
“The weather has been far from perfect. Even this morning, at a lot of corners, it was full of wet patches.
“Just before lunch, we got a lot of drizzle and then the track got soaked. We considered keeping the bike nice and dry for tomorrow and keeping with the test plan. Hopefully the track can dry out tonight, maybe it’ll be a late start tomorrow, but it’s also important to ride in the wet.”
Rea will get another go on his new Yamaha on Wednesday, the final day of testing in Jerez.
“I think this test is primarily about being comfortable,” he said.
“I asked not to test too many hardware parts, electronic parts. I want to come away from here understanding the R1, finding the limit of the bike with my style and then, once everything becomes familiar and automatic, then we can start to test hard parts.
“If we start doing that now, it’s very easy to get lost. The team understand that.”
