Rea lands Roberts ride for British GP

Emerging British superbike star Jonathan Rea has landed a dream wild card ride in the British GP with Kenny’s Roberts’ Honda-powered squad.

The 20-year-old will join 2000 world champion Kenny Roberts Junior in the Donington Park clash on June 24, 2007.

The HM Plant Honda rider was confirmed for the wild card berth immediately after today’s Italian GP in Mugello. His HM Plant Honda boss Neil Tuxworth gave final approval today for Rea to accept the ride on the KR212V after Team Roberts approached HRC earlier in the weekend in Mugello.

Neil Hodgson and Jeremy McWilliams were other candidates but American Roberts’ preference was to give a young rider a chance on the Banbury-built machine.

Rea was an ideal candidate given he is already a Honda contracted rider and his factory FireBlade runs Michelin tyres in the British Superbike series.

The Irish rider completed a test session for the Suzuka Eight-hour endurance race in Japan last week, and was due to stay in the Far East before he races in the Suzuka 300km race next Sunday.

Problems with a visa mean though that he has been forced to fly back to the UK before heading back to Japan tomorrow (Monday).

That rules out Rea getting a chance to test the KR212V before Donington, as the plan would have been to fly him to Barcelona this weekend to ride the bike for the first time at a one-day test session immediately after the Catalunya GP on Monday.

Full story and reaction in Wednesday’s MCN, available from June 6, 2007.