Rea To Call It
A Career
T
he most successful WorldS-
BK rider of all time, Jonathan
Rea, announced on Monday,
August 25, that the 32-year-old
will retire from full-time World-
SBK competition at the end of
the current season.
Rea has accumulated record
totals in almost every pos
-
sible statistical sense inside
the WorldSBK paddock, having
joined first as a Hannspree Hon
-
da WorldSSP rider in 2008, then
as a full-time Honda WorldSBK
rider (also in a team operated by
Ten Kate) in 2009.
A race winner in BSB and then
WorldSSP—all on Honda machin
-
ery—Rea was the most success-
ful WorldSBK rider on a Honda
Fireblade.
Hannspree, Castrol, and then
Pata Honda WorldSBK seasons
saw him take 15 WorldSBK race
wins, but even the highly rated
"JR" was never able to mount a
serious championship challenge
through injury or on a less than
fully competitive Honda pack
-
age.
Realizing that he would never
get a completely competitive
Honda in WorldSBK, or a Honda
MotoGP ride at a factory level,
Rea joined the official Kawasaki
Racing Team WorldSBK effort in
2015. He then went on to rewrite
WorldSBK history.
In a KRT squad that had
already made Tom Sykes
WorldSBK Champion in 2013, the
combination of Rea, a truly com
-
petitive Ninja ZX-10R and then
RR machinery, and his crew chief
Pere Riba, immediately found a
magic winning combination.
After two significant leg
injuries that had also held back
his career in previous seasons,
combined with those years of
arguably overriding the Honda
against the true factory ma
-
chines in WorldSBK, Rea would
go on to win championships in
every Kawasaki season that he
had a bike capable of doing it.
Those proved to be his first six
Kawasaki seasons in succes
-
sion.
With four rounds of the 2025
championship still to go, and
after an almost luckless last two
seasons inside the Pata Maxus
Yamaha squad in WorldSBK,
Rea has secured 119 WorldSBK
career race wins, six champion
-
ships, and 264 podium rides
from 459 race starts.
"After an unforgettable journey
in WorldSBK, I've made the deci-
sion to step away from full-time
racing at the end of this season,"
he said. "Racing has given me
so much, and while it's time to
close this chapter in WorldSBK,
my passion for the sport will
never fade."
Rea's retirement will be from
full-time WorldSBK competition,
but he has left the door open
with his parting comments to
possibly being a test rider/wild
card rider, some say for the UK-
based Honda HRC test team/
BSB team.
Gordon Ritchie
VOLUME ISSUE AUGUST , P29
Jonathan Rea will hang up his helmet
at the end of this season after 17
seasons in WorldSBK.
