After Friday’s practice sessions in Portimao, Jonathan Rea is feeling positive after taking a step on his Yamaha R1.
For the first time this season, Jonathan Rea believes he has made a “big step with a new tyre”. The Northern Irishman has been struggling to maintain a lap pace on the Yamaha R1 since moving from Kawasaki.
However, he believes that in Friday’s practice he has made a big step towards helping his qualifying performance. Rea finished sixth in both free practice sessions at Portimao and had a strong start on a track he enjoys.
“It was a really strong start to be honest,” Rea told WorldSBK.com after a positive Friday lap in Portimao. “We started the race with tyres that weren’t the best because the tyre we preferred and which we thought would be the race tyre wasn’t available enough in the session.”
“The first phase of FP1 was more focused on gaining speed and understanding the bike again. Then in FP2 we made some small changes. We came here after a lot of analysis after Donington and Most to have a different basic set-up for the bike, especially from a chassis point of view.”
“We were coming to the end of the races with a lot of tyres and not taking advantage of the grip of the Pirellis at the start of the race,” Rea continued. “When I put on some new tyres at the end of the session, I felt that we were able to make the tyres work well, which is very positive. It is the first time on a Yamaha that I have been able to make a big step with a new tyre, which is very important for qualifying, as that was the goal of the session.”
Despite the positive step in using Pirelli tyres in the early stages of the race, Rea still believes there is more to be done before the first race in Portimao:
“We still need to take a small step towards tomorrow. There are some important areas to improve, some other Yamaha bikes are stronger in this area, maybe we can learn something and be stronger tomorrow. Sector four is an area I need to improve, and there are some areas that we know will be very difficult to improve. We need to take advantage of the positives of the bike elsewhere on the track.”
Before qualifying, Rea wants to commit to a time attack in FP3. However, with the changes he wants to make to the bike, he may not be able to do so due to the short duration of the session.
“We have budgeted for our tyres so we can do that,” said Rea when asked about the possibility of using time in FP3. “That will be important as stated in the plan. But we still need to improve the bike even more, and that is even more important for tomorrow. We will continue to work with the Yamaha R1 settings and see how it goes.”
