Rea Extends Lead Once More

Jonathan Rea improved his points advantage in the 2020 WorldSBK championship standings after scoring a second and then a fourth place finish at Montmelo today. 

In the opening ten-lap ‘sprint’ race Rea was involved in an early three-rider fight with eventual race winner Michael van der Mark (Yamaha) and Alvaro Bautista (Honda). However, Bautista suffered a big highside crash while Rea was right behind him, causing him to take avoiding action. Jonathan actually clipped the crashing bike of Bautista as he squeezed past and lost time to van der Mark that he was unable to make up in the short sprint event.

After victory in the opening WorldSBK race on Saturday, Jonathan was unable to repeat the success in today’s full-length WorldSBK race two, coming home in fourth place, one place ahead of main title rival Scott Redding (Ducati).

In two weeks’ time KRT will compete in the penultimate round of the 2020 season, at the French circuit of Magny Cours, between October 2 and October 4.

Jonathan Rea, stated: “In the sprint race I felt pretty good but of course in the first laps I was very, very lucky. Alvaro came past on the straight and then in T4 had a huge crash at the exit. I hit his bike and in this moment I thought I was down; was going to crash. I almost let go but miraculously I stayed upright and someone was definitely helping me out there! I had to regroup and chase Mikey but his pace was very good today so congratulations to him and his team. I just didn't have it in the final race. I felt I had some issues straight away with the front feeling, a lot of vibration in the brakes but apart from that feeling I felt good for about ten laps. The grip level started to drop and I suffered more with the front tyre than yesterday. I was getting a lot of warnings. The race was very tough and aggressive in the beginning so as soon as the pace settled I was just there, and the gap was very constant but to arrive in the front group I was going to have to go over the limit and push the front too much. The target coming here was to increase our championship lead and I think we managed quite well.”