World Superbike star Jonathan Rea confident of podium challenge at Catalunya in Barcelona

The Northern Ireland man endured a difficult start with new team Pata Prometeon Yamaha at the opening round in February at Phillip Island in Australia, where Rea failed to score any points.

He was also left battered and bruised following a heavy crash in the final race of the weekend down under, but Rea’s prospects look much brighter going into the first European round of the season.

Rea was fifth quickest on the combined time sheets on Friday, just under half-a-second down on World Supersport champion and Superbike rookie Nicolo Bulega (Aruba.it Ducati).

“It’s been nice, a breath of fresh air competing for the positions we should be battling for,” he said.

“I was fast in the morning and then in the afternoon, we focused on doing a race simulation.

“It was really important to do the full 20 laps because we’re understanding the exact bike behaviour in the last few laps where the drop in grip is quite critical, so coupled with the input that we have from the test – where I did another simulation on two different tyre choices – we have good info to put together to understand the way forward tomorrow.

“You can never be prepared enough at Barcelona: the target is to not get too excited and look after the tyres as much as possible,” added Rea.

“The lap time here can be incredible and I’m sure if I put soft tyres in, we can make a fast lap time, but the drop of grip can cost so much time at the end of the race – so we need to focus on that.”

Rea feels a first Yamaha win may be beyond him this weekend but the six-time champion is optimistic he can challenge for the top three.

“I’m not completely satisfied, there is always potential to improve but we’re working in a really good way,” he said.

“We’ll put our heads together tonight and hopefully tomorrow we can have a package to fight for the top positions.

“World Superbike is so competitive, not just for the front positions but if you have a tough weekend, you’re going to be down the order by quite some way whereas in the past you could survive a little bit having a weaker weekend.

“Our expectation here is to be competitive. I think it’s [podium] a realistic target but we’re still some way off targeting a race win, but that battle for the podium is hotly contested so I expect it to be a lot of guys, but I feel like one of the guys that can fight for that.”

Bulega was 0.247s ahead of team-mate and reigning champion Alvaro Bautista, with Toprak Razgatlioglu (ROKiT BMW) only 0.045s adrift in third and just 0.046s ahead of team-mate Michael van der Mark.

The first race on Saturday is at 13:00 GMT followed by the Superpole race on Sunday (10:00 GMT) and Race 2 at 13:00 GMT.

Meanwhile, Eugene McManus from Randalstown is competing in the World Supersport race at Catalunya as a wildcard entry on the ROKiT Haslam Racing Ducati V2.

British Supersport rider McManus was 28th fastest in free practice.