Jonathan Rea gets new crew chief for WorldSBK 2025

Jonathan Rea will get a new crew chief for the 2025 WorldSBK season, after the six-times World Champion split with Andrew Pitt.

Pitt, who worked with Andrea Locatelli until the end of the 2023 season, started working with Rea from 2024 when the Northern Irish rider joined Yamaha after splitting with Kawasaki.

Replacing Pitt will be a familiar face to Rea: Oriol Pallares, who joined Rea in moving from Kawasaki to Yamaha over the 2023–2024 winter to be his chief mechanic at Yamaha.

Pallares will move into his new role from this week’s test in Jerez, where Yamaha will be on-track alongside the Marc VDS team, Puccetti Kawasaki, the rebranded Bimota team, and HRC’s MotoGP riders.

Pitt, who won the Supersport World Championship in 2008, was free to join the incoming Rea at the Pata Yamaha team when Locatelli decided to to change crew chief for 2024, as Tom O’Kane took over duties on the Italian’s side of the box.

Rea’s first season with Yamaha never reached the expectations of the #65, who achieved only one podium finish in 2024 and finished down in 13th in the overall standings.

Laverty replaces Canepa

The promotion of Pallares to crew chief is not the only personnel change at Yamaha for 2025, as Niccolo Canepa’s promotion inside Yamaha — to be the sporting manager of the road racing department of Yamaha Motor Europe — opens a position at the factory WorldSBK team for a rider coach.

This will be filled by Eugene Laverty, who previously undertook a similar role at the Bonovo BMW team, which next year will downsize to one bike and switch from BMW to Ducati.

Laverty started his WorldSBK career with Yamaha back in 2011, the brand’s final year in the championship before its 2015 return.