After the Friday Practice sessions at Portimao Jonathan Rea is left feeling positive after making a step on his Yamaha R1.

For the first time this season, Jonathan Rea believes he has been able to make 'a big step on a new tyre'. The Northern Irishman has been struggling for one lap pace on the Yamaha R1 since switching from Kawasaki.

However, he believes that in Practice on Friday he has made a big step towards helping his Qualifying performances. Rea was sixth in both Free Practice sessions at Portimao and has had a solid start at a track he enjoys.

"A really solid start to be honest," Rea told WorldSBK.com after a positive Friday at Portimao. "We started on not the best option tyres because the tyre we preferred and what we think will be the race tyre, there is not enough in the allocation.

"FP1 was more about getting up to speed and understanding the bike again. Then in FP2, we made some small changes. We have arrived here after a lot of analysis after Donington and Most to have a different base setup on the bike, especially from a chassis point of view."

Rea continued: "We have been arriving at the end of races with a lot of tyre and not utilising that Pirelli grip at the beginning of the race. When I put some new tyres in at the end of the session I felt we were able to make the tyres work, which is a big positive. It is the first time on the Yamaha I have been able to make a big step on a new tyre, which is all-important for Qualifying it was a target of the session."

Despite the positive step when it comes to utilising the Pirelli tyres in the early stages of the race Rea still believes there is more to be done before Race One at Portimao:

"Still, we need to make a step, a little small step for tomorrow. There are some critical areas we have to improve, some of the other Yamaha's are stronger in that area, we can maybe learn something and be stronger tomorrow. Sector four is an area I need to improve, there are a few areas that we know are going to be very difficult to improve on. We need to utilise the positives of the bike elsewhere on the track."

Before Qualifying Rea wants to commit to a time attack in FP3. However, with the changes he wants to make to the bike, he may be unable to due to the shorter length of the session.

"We budget our tyre allocation to be able to do that," Rea said when asked about a time attack in FP3. "That is going to be key it is in the plan. But we still need to improve the bike further, that is more important for tomorrow. We are going to keep working with the setup of the Yamaha R1 and see how we go."