Rea flawless to take all-time World Superbike wins record
Full WorldSBK race one results from Brno
Jonathan Rea has obliterated the competition to win a historic 60th World Superbike race to take the outright career victories record from Carl Fogarty.
Full WorldSBK race one results from Brno
Jonathan Rea has obliterated the competition to win a historic 60th World Superbike race to take the outright career victories record from Carl Fogarty.
The defending World Superbike champion produced a trademark dominant performance by darting into the lead ahead of pole-sitter Tom Sykes on the opening lap before gradually building a lead to ease away from his rivals.
With a five-second advantage with a couple of laps to go, as Marco Melandri got past Sykes for second place, Rea eased off for his history-making victory to surpass Fogarty’s previous record of 59 race wins in the series.
In an incident-filled opener at Brno, the race required two restarts before being run on a shortened distance of 16 laps. In the first race start Michael Ruben Rinaldi crashed out at Turn 5 on lap three which forced a red flag after the air fence was damaged by the Italian’s Ducati.
At the first restart a technical problem with the start lights saw the red flights flick on and off, prompting some riders to start, which caused an abandonment and a second restart after a another warm-up lap.
Despite the brief confusion, Rea looked unfussed to produce a near-identical blast off the line from the initial race start to dart into the lead on the opening lap ahead of teammate Sykes.
Melandri also nipped past Sykes at the start of lap four but Rea had already built up a two-second advantage in that time which left the Aruba.it Racing Ducati rider with too much to do.
With Sykes having to settle for third place, the majority of race action was created between the two Pata Yamaha riders as Michael van der Mark and Alex Lowes enjoyed a race-long battle before the Dutch rider pulled out a small margin to secure fourth place ahead of his teammate in fifth place.
Milwaukee Aprilia notched up a strong performance with Eugene Laverty in sixth and Lorenzo Savadori in seventh ahead of factory Ducati’s Chaz Davies who faded late on in eighth place.
Leon Camier was another who suffered a late race fade, potentially struggling from his rib injury late on, but held on to take ninth place for Red Bull Honda in front of Donington Park rostrum finisher Toprak Razgatlioglu for Puccetti Kawasaki.
Yonny Hernandez enjoyed one of his best races of the year for Pedercini Kawasaki in 11th place ahead of fellow independent Kawasaki riders Leandro Mercado and Roman Ramos. Barni Ducati’s Xavi Fores and factory Ducati's Rinaldi rounded out the points places.
