‘We need to improve our outright speed’ - work to be done for Jonathan Rea and Yamaha

The six-time WorldSBK champion secured a seventh place finish, but after an impressive day one, Jonathan Rea was unable to carry that momentum into the final day.

A technical issue at turn one meant Rea spent part of the day with just one bike at his disposal, but he wasn’t ‘completely satisfied’ with the results. 

• Nicolo Bulega's scary admission after Portimao WorldSBK test: ‘We have some margin’ 

• Toprak Razgatlioglu buzzing after smashing lap record: ‘99% ready to race’

Speaking to WorldSBK.com, Rea said: “The guys need to check exactly what happened but I just came to a halt at Turn 1; we parked that bike for the day, so lost a little bit of time with what happened and then obviously, we only had one bike for the rest of the test.

“We focussed on our workload again, confirming the bike and I’m not completely satisfied with the feeling out there.

“I did a longer run to understand the tyre drop but I got faster and faster during that, so there’s some positives.

“I think our outright speed, we need to improve a little bit. I wasn’t completely comfortable so we’re still working to find that optimum setup for that style; it’s our first time here at Portimao together and the bike was behaving a little bit differently to what I was used to do.

“There’s work to do for everybody but I am happy, confident and relieved that testing has finished.”

Rea, who is still adapting to the R1 following nine seasons with Kawasaki, was again busy testing various new parts for the Japanese manufacturer.

That included suspension, chassis and what he described as ‘normal test items’.

While his feeling aboard the R1 wasn’t the best on day two, the parts tested worked well, according to Rea

“We tested some suspension ideas, some chassis parts and normal test items,” said the Northern Irishman. “We experimented with geometry and setup, just running through the ideas we had to improve our feeling.

“I haven’t done a full weekend at Portimao on the Yamaha so I was starting from a Jerez-based setup and we ended up somewhere similar to that.

“We’re in the ballpark but I think we can fix that right now and continue working on that in Phillip Island.

“The items were positive, step-by-step we are trying to understand how the tyre behaves, an area we are trying to focus right now, to give me some traction as I pick up the bike.

“Some ideas and parts were better, some were the same and not too different. We’ll keep working with that and see what we can do in Australia.”