Peerless Rea completes dominant WorldSBK triple in Portimao

WorldSBK Portimao – Race Results (2)

Jonathan Rea completed a dominant brace of victories in Round 3 of the 2020 WorldSBK Championship at Portimao to assume the championship lead for the first time this season.

Having ridden clear of his rivals in both Race 1 and the Superpole Race, Rea didn’t put a foot wrong in the final race of the weekend in Portugal, snatching the lead at turn one and multiplying his advantage to the chequered flag.

His fifth WorldSBK win of the season in nine races and the perfect response to a relatively lacklustre round in Jerez a weekend earlier, Rea has nudged ahead of erstwhile championship leader Scott Redding in the overall standings.

To his credit, Redding – seven and fifth in the first two races - minimised the damage with a more convincing performance in race two, pushing his way up to second position early on and just holding onto the position to the end.

Indeed, Redding attempted to stick with Rea initially but would eventually slip back into the clutches of Michael van der Mark. The Dutchman briefly moved ahead with seven laps to go when Redding made an error into Turn 5, only for the Yamaha man to commit his own error a few corners later to reverse the positions again.

From here Redding held firm to the chequered flag, keeping the margin to Rea overall pegged to a meagre four points.

Chaz Davies enjoyed a fruitful end to his weekend with a solid push to fourth position, the Welshman assisted by Toprak Razgatlioglu, Alex Lowes and Leon Haslam taking separate tumbles at the tricky Turn 5 left-hander. Though Razgatlioglu and Haslam got going again, Lowes was forced to retire.

As such, Alvaro Bautista picked up the baton for Honda with his best result of the season for Honda in fifth, ahead of Michael Ruben Rinaldi and Tom Sykes, who gave BMW a reason to smile after Eugene Laverty was another to fall victim to a fall at Turn 5 on lap one.

The recovering Razgatlioglu brought the Yamaha back to eighth position, with Federico Caricasulo securing his best finish of the season in ninth, helped in part by his GRT Yamaha team-mate and Xavi Fores coming together at Turn 2.

Leandro Mercado secured Motocorsa Racing’s first top ten finish in WorldSBK in tenth, ahead of the recovering Gerloff, Laverty and Haslam, with Marco Melandri and first-time point scorer Sylvain Barrier rounding out the top 15.

Elsewhere, Loris Baz - a podium winner in the Superpole Race - was another to retire after crashing at the final corner on the opening lap.