Jonathan Rea’s first Yamaha season in WorldSBK ended with the six-times World Champion down in 13th in the championship — it was a season more difficult than R🍨ea 🦄anticipated.

However, there were at least moments — such as qualifying and the Superpole Race in Donington, and more recently the races in Estoril where Rea was able to fight for top-five positions — which offered more optಞimism.

“It was a challenge,” Rea said in review of his 2024 seas🌱on🤡.

“I knew that moving manufacturers was always going to be a c♔hallenge, but I didn’t expect to struggle and not find my feet as fast as I expected, to be honest.

“We had some glimpses of showing our full potential, so it’s now a case of, after a long season of working with the team, understanding the positives and negatives of⛦ the😼 combination of me and the bike, [and] trying to put everything together this off-season.

“Honestly, Yamaha♛ are working really hard in the background now to continue developing the Yamaha R1, so I’m looking forward to go to the next test and understand exactly our level, introduce the new parts, and keep working towards Phillip Island in 2025.”

Rea said that work was being done across the R1 pla🐲tform🌊 in order to find additional performance.

“We’re working all over the bike, from performance, the engine, electronics, chassis — it🦩’s like anyone, it’s constant development,” he ཧsaid.

“It seems like in Superbike𒁃 now, if you stand still yo🎶u get left behind.

“No♕w is a good chance for us to move the bike forwards 𝓡and create a good feeling for me to push on the limit.

“Superbike is stacked, it’s so competitive. I remember, Jerez, I think I qualified on row five but I was two-tenths from row two. If you lose this one, two, three tenths when you’re not su🐬per-competitive, it can put you really at th𝄹e back of the list.

“So, just trying to work on a lot of things from my side and try to get that feeওling to really push on the limit.”

The six-times champion is now putting the onus on Yamaha to improve before the end of this off-season period in order to deliver b🐟etter re🃏sults in 2025.

“This year w🌟as just [about] understanding the bike,” Rea said.

“Now is the critical time for the team and Yamaha as a manufacturer to work because they have a lot of data from this season, a lot of comments, so hopefully I can make the bike a little bit more ‘mine’ and🌟 we can increase the performance of the bike overall to fight with everybody else.”