The most successful WorldSBK rider of all time, Jonathan Rea (38), announced on Monday, August 25, that he would retire from full-time WorldSBK competition at the end of the current season.
Rea has accumulated record totals in almost every possible statistical sense inside the WorldSBK paddock, having joined first as a Hannspree Honda WorldSSP rider in 2008, then 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 machinery—Rea was the most successful 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 package.
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, truly competitive Ninja ZX-10R and then RR machinery, and his crew chief Pere Riba, immediately a magic winning combination was found.
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 machines 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 six first Kawasaki seasons in succession.
Rea and his racing family have had a long association with the previous WorldSBK GOAT, Carl Fogarty, but it was all those ‘unbeatable’ Fogarty records—and those of almost all the other WorldSBK greats—that Rea would go about first matching and then exceeding.
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, those six championships, and 264 podium rides from 459 race starts.
The man himself, said “After an unforgettable journey in WorldSBK, I’ve made the decision to step away from full-time racing at the end of this season… 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.
