WATCH: World Superbike fans cheer Jonathan Rea after 'amazing' podium first for Yamaha
Jonathan Rea claimed a first podium appearance in Yamaha colours with third place in Sunday’s Superpole race at Donington Park.
Rea now sits 11th in the overall standings before closing out his home meeting today with a front-row position for the final race from 2 o’clock.
"It's amazing - I know the podium was a little bit ahead of where we targeted, especially in such a short race,” said the Northern Ireland rider over the @WorldSBK social media account on X. “But I nailed my start, my start was amazing.”
It marks a landmark first podium for six-time world champion Rea since the switch from Kawasaki and adds another positive to his weekend of progress.
His 19th podium at Donington Park arrived from eighth on the grid as overall leader Toprak Razgatlioglu (ROKiT BMW Motorrad WorldSBK Team) claimed a sixth successive race win, with Nicolo Bulega (Aruba.it Racing – Ducati) runner-up.
Rea’s third for Pata Prometeon Yamaha marked the end of his longest career podium drought.
On Saturday, Rea recorded his best World Superbike full-length race result with Yamaha by finishing fifth.
“My pace was better than I expected and you know we had a bad Free Practice 1 as we had a technical issue,” said Rea on the www.worldsbk.com website following Saturday’s race. “But in Free Practice 2 my pace was okay and you always think that you need to improve but you forget the race pace is going to be about there and that everybody can only go so fast.
“To be honest, we didn’t change the bike drastically, we worked on some points this weekend, especially with the electronics to fine-tune it.
"Top five and a bonus was top Yamaha which is not something which we really think about as ‘Loka’ (team-mate Andrea Locatelli) was right there but it is nice.”
Ahead of Sunday’s Superpole race he highlighted the importance of a strong start and said: “The Superpole Race all depends on the start and tomorrow, I need to pray to the heavens that I get off the line good as that will make or break my day as that grid position carries over to Race 2 so it is an important one.”