Attention to detail key to Rea’s success

Jonathan Rea believes that last weeks test in Valencia played a vital role in the teams winter development programme in preparation for the 2010 season.

Although Rea was only fourth fastest he feels that he used the track time well and is confident that his Ten Kate Honda has and will continue to drastically improve.

At the Valencia race in 2009,  Rea suffered his worst results of the year after the crude power characteristics of the powerful Honda made it difficult to ride around the twisty Spanish circuit.

Rea said: “I’m happy where we’re at, we used it as a test and we’ve ruled out a lot of things so when we go to Portimao in January we’ll be ready to go. We can arrive there with a bike similar to what we intend to race with at Phillip Island, but we’ll still have time to fine tune it.”

Another area of constant development is the advanced electronics on the bike. Having fine tuned the fuel mapping to give usable power there are still areas of the advanced electronics that can be refined.

“We’re still only scratching the surface when it comes to electronics and in the debrief after the test we’ve decided that we need to dedicate a number of hours just to the electronics when we test at Portimao. This is an area where our bike can definitely improve.”

Rea will next be in action at Portimao from 22nd to 24th January 2010