Rea sees off Davies to equal Fogarty wins record

Full WorldSBK race two results from Imola

Jonathan Rea has secured a dominate double victory at Imola after seeing off Chaz Davies in race two to equal Carl Fogarty’s World Superbike wins record.

The reigning triple World Superbike champion has produced the perfect race weekend with pole position, a double victory and fastest laps in both races to move his career wins tally to 59 to draw level with four-time world title winner Fogarty.

Rea was made to work for his race two triumph battling through the order on the reverse grid but in trademark style the Kawasaki rider climbed up to second place by lap four and set about chasing down Davies.

The pair traded a number of overtakes as Rea looked for a way past the Aruba.it Racing Ducati and after some frantic action the Northern Irish rider got the move done on lap 13.

One lap later the World Superbike championship leader then notched up the fastest lap of the race to quickly pull out a gap of over one second to storm to victory.

Rea, who also takes the outright record for career double victories with his 17^th pair, continues to make World Superbike history drawing level with Fogarty’s career wins record as he extends his championship lead to 47 points in the hunt for a fourth title.

With Davies having to settle for second place, Tom Sykes secured the final podium spot after a bold move past Barni Ducati’s Xavi Fores two laps from the end.

Jordi Torres recorded his best result on the MV Agusta with fifth place after profiting from an incident between Pata Yamaha’s Michael van der Mark and factory Ducati’s Marco Melandri who crashed out together in a collision on lap eight.

Alex Lowes gave the factory Yamaha squad something to cheer in sixth place ahead of Michael Ruben Rinaldi with Puccetti Kawasaki’s Toprak Razgatlioglu in eighth place after wildcard teammate Leon Haslam suffered a late issue to drop out of the top ten.

That promoted Eugene Laverty to ninth place for Milwaukee Aprilia, after teammate Lorenzo Savadori crashed out early on, with Leandro Mercado completing the top ten for Orelac Kawasaki.

Loris Baz claimed 11^th place for Althea BMW ahead of Roman Ramos on the Team GoEleven Kawasaki as Yonny Hernandez, PJ Jacobsen and Ondrej Jezek rounded out the points places.