Jonathan Rea reveals bike issue in Portuguese WorldSBK Race 1

Despite a strong start to Race 1 at the Portuguese WorldSBK, Jonathan Rea finished down in 15th, something he says was down to an issue with his motorcycle.

Rea’s strong start saw him battling inside the top five early on, before a huge front slide at turn 13 a few laps in meant he dropped down to seventh. From there, Rea went further backwards, eventually finishing 15th.

While Rea’s Yamaha switch has yet to yield a victory, there have been signs of progress in the #65 camp in recent races, and having qualified eighth it seemed unlikely that a 15th place finish was achieved on pure pace.

After the race, Rea revealed that an issue with his Yamaha’s quickshifter was the cause of his descent through the pack.

“We definitely found a step forward today, but unfortunately quite early in the race we had an issue with the quickshifter, so I couldn’t shift up or down with the electronics, and had to go back to manual shifting,” Rea said. “The lap time obviously dropped a lot but I didn’t want to give up on the race.”

The encouragement for the six-times champion came from the feeling he found with the R1 during the first race.

“Before this problem,” he said, “my R1 was the strongest package I’ve ridden all season. Even without an amazing start, I made a good Turn 1, was able to pass some riders and felt like I could potentially catch the group in front.

“I definitely feel like we’ve turned a corner,” Rea concluded, adding that “I can ride on the limit and take liberties with the R1 to exploit its strengths.”

Rea’s Yamaha teammate, Andrea Locatelli, didn’t finish much better than the #65, crossing the line in 11th, but it was his route there which left the Italian feeling far less positive than Rea.

“Honestly, it was a strange race,” Locatelli said. “It was difficult to fight to stay with the front group, I struggled a lot and my feeling was not the best. We are focused on looking forward, the feeling was good in FP3 and Superpole but in the race the performance didn’t come.”