Race Two Win For Rea At Teruel Round
Jonathan Rea scored second place in the Tissot-Superpole race today before taking his 96th career race win at the Teruel WorldSBK round in Motorland Aragon - extending his championship lead in the process.
In the opening ten-lap ‘sprint’ race Rea took the holeshot and led for much of the first lap, only to be passed by eventual race winner Scott Redding (Ducati). Rea was finally second in this morning’s race, holding off the challenge of Saturday race winner Michael Ruben Rinaldi (Ducati).
Race two, run over 18 laps, saw Rea once more opt for a conventional SC0 rear race tyre when most of his rivals went for the SCX super soft. He was second for most of the race, which was led by first Redding and then Rinaldi, but Jonathan took the lead on lap 16 and rode clear to record his eighth race win of the year.
With Redding finishing third Rea now has a 36-point advantage in the championship standings, with three rounds and nine individual races left to run.
After the two back-to-back Motorland Aragon race weekends five-time champion Rea leaves with 243 points in total, Redding has 207, Toprak Razgatlioglu 147, Chaz Davies 141, Michael van der Mark 133, Rinaldi 131 and Alex Lowes 127.
An almost literal home race for the KRT squad is next up in the championship calendar, with Montmelo in Barcelona hosting round six of WorldSBK, between 18 and 20 September.
Jonathan Rea, stated: “We got off to a good start in the Superpole race but when Scott came past quite early it disturbed my rhythm a bit. He set a very good pace. I was strong in the first part of the circuit and although I enjoyed the ten-lap race I realised that today it was going to be second. In race two I realised that instead of managing the race I needed to go through, and then I had a huge ‘moment’. I went all in, full gas in that race. You have to ride on 100% but not make any mistakes. It was more a race for me trying to be clean and not making any errors. With the entry speed I could carry and the stopping performance from the Ninja ZX-10RR – also how we kept the tyre until the end – I felt like we had a better package.”