Ads

The Pata Yamaha WorldSBK team which lines up Jonathan Rhea and Andrea Locatelli completed two days of testing at the Jerez circuit in preparation for the 2025 FIM Superbike World Championship. They spent a whole day on dry wednesday before continuing to work on the wet Thursday.

On the first day, Jonathan Rhea completed 50 laps, with the Northern Irishman wasting no time in getting back up to speed on the Yamaha R1 WorldSBK, despite lingering dampness in the morning and strong gusts of wind in the afternoon. The six-time WorldSBK champion World SBK continued to work in the wet today, completing 40 laps in a best time of 1:53.058.

His teammate Andrea Locatelli completed 70 laps of the 4,423km circuit on Wednesday, including a long run in the afternoon, and 19 additional laps for a wet shakedown on the second day.

Neither driver performed a qualifying simulation or timed attack., focusing with Yamaha engineers on key development points for the new season and on configuring the chassis and electronics settings.

The official Pata Yamaha WorldSBK team will head directly to the Autódromo Internacional do Algarve (Portimão) for further development testing from Monday 27 January.

Jonathan Rhea, 1:40.368: “Yesterday we had a very good start and wasted no time in picking up speed. I felt good on my Yamaha R1 from the first laps and we continued to improve step by step. The pace was good, we didn’t attack the clock and we worked on the development programme. We were held up in the garage a few times by small issues, but I’m happy with this first day! I enjoyed doing some laps to get more familiar with the R1 in these conditions and, honestly, we made some very positive changes! Many thanks to the team for their efforts, two days of good information and now we have to go to Portugal straight away to continue putting the package together for Australia.”

Andrea Locatelli, 1:40.989: “Even with the wind yesterday, we tried to ride in the dry and focused on a long run to get a good feeling back with my R1 after the winter. Today we didn’t do many laps, but we did some tests on the bike to be a little more ready for Portimao next week. It was useful to do a little shakedown to check how everything works in the wet, for example the electronics and the chassis settings after yesterday, and we’ll see! We have Portimao to work more, cover more distance and prepare for Phillip Island. The changes in conditions here in Jerez have been strange, a lot of warm wind yesterday, and today wet. The most important thing is to continue building the feeling with my R1 and then we will have a clearer idea, working well towards our goals for the 2025 season.”

Jerez Test Day 1

Jerez Test Day 2

Yamaha Test Jerez Superbike

All articles on Pilots: Andrea Locatelli, Jonathan Rea

All articles on Teams: Yamaha WorldSBK