Rea ‘just happy to finish’ after contact with Gerloff

Jonathan Rea had to recover from early contact with Garrett Gerloff which sent the six-time world champion through the gravel, before taking second place in the final WorldSBK race of the weekend.

Until that point, Rea had taken back-to-back wins and was leading the race at the time of Gerloff’s lunge at turn 14. 

The American made a late surge to the inside, leaving Rea nowhere to go but across the gravel while the GRT Yamaha man crashed. 

Speaking after the race, Rea was ‘happy’ just to finish: "I’m just so happy to finish to be honest. It was early in the race but he (Garrett Gerloff) came through and I thought the line wasn’t big there, was quite narrow. 

"I thought ‘alright’ and then he crashed, and I thought ‘no!’ but my instincts just told me to open the gas and try to get away from the bike, but then there was deep, deep gravel. 

"So I fully motocrossed it, put my weight on the rear and thought ‘I best let at least two guys past’ so that I didn’t get an advantage for sure; because it was faster to just straight-line the chicane. 

"Then I did what I could with the intermediates. Huge kudos to Pirelli because that tyre stayed together and we were doing 1m 52s at the end and that’s fast. 

"The bike was working really good today, but of course the right decision was slicks, so fair play to Scott [Redding] for that. But I’m really happy to get out of MotorLand with a one-one-two."  

Round one was more than just a weekend that saw Rea leave Aragon atop the championship standings, as the 100 WorldSBK victories milestone was also achieved for the Kawasaki rider.