The most successful WSBK rider ever called this season his last. We look back over his career to find out just why he’ll leave as the Greatest Of All Time
When WorldSBK GOAT Jonathan Rea calls time on his full-time WSBK riding career, we really should try to reappraise the depth and breadth of his astounding accomplishments. And, maybe more importantly, understand how and why he achieved what he did.
It was no surprise that the undisputed stats champ for the ages would hang up the gloves, boots and leathers at the end of this year because the last few campaigns have delivered an ever-reducing total of wins per season. It seems that there has been a realisation that he would not get on a sure-fire championship-winning package again anytime soon.
Rea will also have his own unspoken personal reasons for leaving after the final round in Jerez, of course, but we must also note the reality that his most recent two seasons have also been blighted by injury – unwelcome throwbacks to previous seasons before he won his first big championship.
Ambition personified, ambition achieved
A race winner in BSB and then WorldSSP – all on Honda machinery – Rea was a BSB rider for three seasons, improving each year to finish runner-up in 2007 on his HM Plant Honda.
He joined the overall global scene as a Hannspree Honda WorldSSP rider in 2008, then as a full-time Honda WorldSBK rider (also in a team operated by Ten Kate) in 2009. Controversially, especially for an Australian audience, as soon as Rea stood no chance of winning the title in his rookie WorldSSP year (losing to his teammate Andrew Pitt), he was promoted into the Ten Kate WorldSBK side of the garage for the final round of 2008 – and then for the whole of the next year. Pitt had been earmarked for that ride, but the ambitious and seemingly impatient Rea was seen as a better bet. This was an early sign of the ruthless streak that all top racers need in order to ascend to the very top.
They also need to be tougher than teak and Rea has often needed to be, having suffered some heavy injuries in the earlier and later stages of his career.
Hannspree, Castrol and then Pata Honda campaigns saw him take 15 WorldSBK race wins, but even the highly rated JR was never able to mount a serious championship challenge, both through injury and a less than fully-competitive tech package. He even acquitted himself well in his two MotoGP outings, with an eighth and a seventh place in 2012 – and that was before the rider himself became the full package he would become so comprehensively at his peak.
Eventually realising that he would never get a completely competitive Honda in WorldSBK, or a Honda MotoGP career at a meaningful factory level, Rea’s strong loyalty to Honda had been over-extended and he joined the official Kawasaki Racing Team’s WorldSBK effort in 2015.
Cheeeeampiooooneeezz!
When Rea joined KRT he was an instant revelation, even in pre-season testing. His long-time crew chief Pere Riba said he knew that Rea was going to be great after their first test together.
In a KRT squad that had already made Tom Sykes WorldSBK champion in 2013 (and had come close twice more, in the year before and after that success), the combination of Rea, the truly competitive Ninja ZX-10R and then RR machinery – plus the rider-mentoring of his crew chief and team management – immediately created a magic winning combination.
He displaced 2013 champion Tom Sykes as the golden Kawasaki child in rapid order, and soon overcame any lingering doubts that Rea was the kind of rider who could only compete for one manufacturer (Honda, all the way to this point) or could only win at certain circuits that suited him or his bike.
For the next six years Rea won the championship simply because he had a bike capable of winning. Like a few others also had, in fairness.
But Rea clearly had something extra about him. Even in that single Kawasaki year – 2019 – when he very clearly didn’t have the tech package to best Alvaro Bautista and his all-new rocketship Ducati V4-R, Rea still managed to secure the championship win.
How did he and KRT manage that?
By never losing heart, never settling for second place unless it was thrust upon them, and then – not for the first time – by Rea getting inside his rival’s head enough to win the war of mind games.
With a fifth straight title in the green bag, and Bautista gone to a theoretically but not actually competitive Honda HRC squad, Rea once again showed his very own kind of special level compared to the others by taking a sixth title on fundamentally the same bike he started with in 2015.
It’s impossible to underestimate Rea and KRT’s grinding need to win and an ability to adapt to achieve their goals during that period. Six championships in succession do not lie.
Kind of Blue
Eventually even Rea ran out of push and patience with Kawasaki’s waning tech realities once his Ninja could not – in another parallel with his end-of-Honda-days – truly compete against Toprak Razgatlioglu (on a Yamaha) and Bautista (back on that Ducati rocket and ready to take two titles).
Putting ourselves into Rea’s shoes for a minute, we must surmise it’s no good being a member of the undisputed ‘big three’ in the championship if you think you are only going to finish third. Not when you have the mentality and status of a six-times champion.
When Razgatlioglu finally upset the Blue applecart and left Yamaha for the supposedly uncompetitive BMW in 2024, Rea saw his chance to inherit Toprak’s recent championship-winning bike. Crescent Racing and Yamaha also saw a way to replace the irreplaceable and Jonathan duly paid a substantial sum to get out of his Kawasaki contract and race the R1. He couldn’t take crew chief Riba with him, but he hooked up with his old teammate and rival, Andrew Pitt, who had been building a strong career as a crew chief with Andrea Locatelli.
Rea, Pitt, Crescent Racing, Yamaha’s official effort – how could that combo fail in at least competing hard against Bautista/Ducati and Razgatlioglu/BMW?
Well, injury could and did intervene to spoil things; from the start and then more than once thereafter.
The Rea-Pitt relationship, still personally strong despite Rea ‘taking’ Pitt’s ride in WorldSBK all those years before, did not work as intended inside the garage or out on track, and Rea the ruthless asked for a change.
Deprived of Riba the year before, when Pere stayed with Kawasaki (and now BbKRT), Rea asked for his old chief mechanic Oriol ‘Uri’ Pallares for 2025. Another big gamble, as this is Uri’s first year as a full crew chief.
A badly broken foot in the pre-season tests at Phillip Island ended Rea’s hopes of rekindling his career and probably heralded the end months before he announced his retirement.
Final fault?
Many see Rea’s move to Yamaha as a mistake, his first real one (unless you include not leaving Honda earlier, or taking some less-than-ideal-on-paper MotoGP opportunities).
It has been a costly one in all ways, for sure.
Whatever anyone thinks, however, it was an undeniably brave decision to take. Even if it has delivered just one pole position (Assen, 2024) and one podium finish (Donington 2024) on the works R1.
Even though the past two years have been a late-career return to his pre-Kawasaki WorldSBK pain and purgatory, they have shown that Rea still has a desire to win that only great champions do. Self-belief has never been the problem.
Rea did not seem to want to retire, but without a truly top ride available, his prospects of full competitiveness were narrowing towards a non-event horizon.
CAREER IN NUMBERS
- Jonathan Andrew Rea has accumulated record totals in almost every possible statistical sense inside the WorldSBK paddock. In meaningful terms, the only major statistic that he does not lead the rest on is his number of career pole positions. Tom Sykes has 51 Superpole ‘wins’, Rea has 45.
But…
- Rea has 119 race wins to Toprak Razgatlioglu’s 72
- Rea has 459 race starts in WorldSBK compared to Troy Corser’s 377
- Rea has 104 fastest laps to Razgatlioglu’s 61
- Rea has 264 podiums compared to Razgatlioglu’s 162
- Rea has been in the points in 403 races, Corser in 307
- Rea has led 201 races to Razgatlioglu’s 119
- Rea has 6336.5 championship points compared to Corser’s 4021.5
- And Rea has the small matter of six championships to Carl Fogarty’s four.
REA’S CHAMPIONSHIP WINNING KRT SEASONS
- 2015 Rea 548 – Chaz Davies (Ducati) 416
- 2016 Rea 498 – Tom Sykes (Kawasaki) 447
- 2017 Rea 556 – Chaz Davies (Ducati) 403
- 2018 Rea 545 – Chaz Davies (Ducati) 356
- 2019 Rea 663 – Alvaro Bautista (Ducati) 498
- 2020 Rea 360 – Scott Redding (Ducati) 305
Why is the GOAT the GOAT?
1 Talent
That sheer ability to get the best out of what a rider has under them at any one time is the number one factor. Seems obvious but all the top riders say the most important of all the requirements is talent. Rea had more than enough talent for WorldSBK, six times over.
2 The drive to improve
Rea’s need to find a way to become better every year – in himself and with the bike – was obvious, seemingly endless and took everything into account. Fitness, tech changes, new techniques… The best example? He used to be not that great in Superpole Qualifying, but he worked on this to make his races more straightforward. As a consequence, he became the second best ever in that specialised high-pressure Superpole discipline.
3 Building ‘Team 65’
Rea has consistently surrounded himself with people who are completely on his side. People who love him, people who want him to succeed as much as he does. He successfully did that inside his main WorldSBK teams. It seems he had to have everyone around him truly inside ‘Team 65’ to be his best self. Hence the big personal and professional shockwaves when he left his previous long-term teams. It was largely a successful approach, as his career stats underline in gold leaf.
4 Even greater than the numbers
Now Rea has retired, after shattering almost every record there is in WorldSBK, the answer to the question of his true greatness is actually another question.
How many MORE races and titles would he have won if he had not suffered those big injuries, and not spent half of his WorldSBK career on packages that were just not quite competitive enough?
The Next Chapter
In November it was announced that Rea would move to HRC in a test and development role. It’s quite the coup for Honda, as Rea’s wealth of experience could provide a big boost to their perennially disappointing WorldSBK fortunes. And while there’s been no official confirmation either way, the move also raises the tantalising prospect that we could see Rea compete again as a wildcard.
For Rea, this next chapter ties neatly back to where it all began – something he’s clearly aware of as he looks ahead. “From the moment HRC shared their plans and the new role they envision for me, I was immediately excited to understand how I could contribute. It feels like a real full-circle moment to return to Honda, the manufacturer with which I gained my initial WorldSBK experience and my very first race win in the category. Although my role will be quite different from what I’ve been used to as a full-time racer, I’m highly motivated to embrace this new chapter. My aim is to bring all the experience and knowledge I’ve gained throughout my career and use it to support the development of the CBR1000RR-R and the Honda HRC factory team in the best possible way. I’m also very happy to be working again with Chris Pike, the Honda HRC test team project manager and my former crew chief, with whom I share great memories and mutual respect. Working together as a team, I’m confident we can build something truly positive for the future. I can’t wait to get started.”
