Jonathan Rea was third fastest during a two-day test at Navarra in Northern Spain,
which will host a World Superbike round for the first time in August.

Jonathan Rea took the chance to familiarise himself with the Navarra circuit in Northern Spain during a test this week, which has been added to the World Superbike calendar for the first time this year.

Rea and his Kawasaki team joined three other manufacturers at the two-day test, including Yamaha, BMW and Honda, to bank some experience of the challenging 3.9km circuit, which will host round seven of the series from August 20-22.

The six-time champion ended the test third fastest overall on the time sheets, less than one-tenth-of-a-second down on pacesetter Toprak Razgatlioglu on the Pata Yamaha.

Rea, who packed up early at midday on the second day of the test to save some of their designated test hours for later in the season. His KRT team-mate Alex Lowes was fifth quickest.

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

“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.”

Rea said the Navarra circuit had a ‘mixture of everything’, adding that his priority was to learn as much as possible rather than going all-out for a fast lap time.

“This track has some mixtures of everything,” said the Northern Ireland rider.

“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.”

Rea leads the standings by 20 points from Razgatlioglu going into round four next weekend at Donington Park, which returns to the calendar after missing out in 2020 due to the coronavirus pandemic.