Jonathan Rea targeted Pedrosa’s Honda MotoGP ride for 2019

Jonathan Rea has revealed enquiries were made over possibility of replacing Dani Pedrosa at Repsol Honda for the 2019 MotoGP season before the team signed Jorge Lorenzo.

The Ulsterman started two races for Repsol Honda in 2012 as a substitute for the injured Casey Stoner, notching up an eighth and seventh place finish at Misano and Aragon respectively.

However, they remain his only MotoGP outings to date, with Rea’s subsequent switch from Honda to the Kawasaki WorldSBK team in 2015 limiting his chances of making a seamless transition to the premier class.

Nonetheless, Rea says he has still entertained the idea of progressing to MotoGP, even if he has previously stated he will only do so with a competitive package.

In an interview with WorldSBK.com Rea expanded on this by revealing his management made initial contact about the upcoming available seat at Repsol Honda once it became clear Pedrosa was on his way out of the team.

“I doubt Kawasaki will go back to MotoGP,” he admitted. That would be a dream, but I’ve never had the conversation and I don’t feel it in my body.

“Options I’ve had? Not many to be honest. I hear the same things, “you’re here and you should do this”. In an ideal world I’d love to go and pick what I wanted and do it. In the past, there have not been too many options. Nothing concrete, for sure.

“I think the year Dani Pedrosa was talking about retirement, I think it was around the Le Mans weekend, Chuck (Aksland, Rea’s manager) was trying to get me on the Repsol bike – maybe I was out of contract at Kawasaki.

“It would’ve been cool to go there. It was a backburner deal; I was put on a backburner. I felt like the Jorge Lorenzo thing was happening at Honda.

“Aside from that, Aprilia came to see me once. That wasn’t something I was really that interested in.”