Navarra circuit tricky ‘to go fast at, lots of intricacies and challenges’ - Rea

Jonathan Rea has taken to the new Navarra circuit - round seven of the 2021 WorldSBK championship, for the first time in a test that also involved Yamaha, BMW and Honda. 

Rea finished third fastest, while main championship challenger through three rounds Toprak Razgatlioglu topped the two-day test ahead of Garrett Gerloff. 

Two weeks ago in Misano, the six-time world champion was winless for the first time in a race weekend since Estoril last year, however, Rea still managed to claim three third place finishes ahead of next week’s home round at Donington Park. 

Rea and Kawasaki elected not to use the full two days of available running at Navarra - decided to save testing allocation time for later in the year. 

Even so, Rea completed 112 laps in just over a day’s running at a circuit that’s ‘very difficult to go fast at’.  

"It has been a really positive two days. I learned the circuit and it is a very difficult circuit to go fast at, to be fair," added Rea. 

"It has lots of little intricacies and challenges. From a technical point of view it is very challenging. I enjoyed working it out. On day one I learned the track quite quickly but I wasn’t comfortable to keep pushing the bike. 

"On day two I woke up after sleeping on all my feelings and the data we gathered on day one, and I was able to be quite fast straight away. I carried that rhythm through. 

"We found a lot of valuable information that will be good for race weekend and it will definitely allow us to make a shortcut in our set-up time when we start out in free practice one. 

"This track has some mixtures of everything. Some super-fast corners but also some very tight and twisty sections in sectors two and three. 

"The race is going to be a nice one. The main priority here was to learn and I am looking forward to Donington now for our next race weekend."