Australia WorldSBK SP Race Results: Rea resists Razgatlioglu to win

Jonathan Rea bounced back from his disastrous start to the 2020 WorldSBK Championship season with a hard fought Superpole Race victory at Phillip Island in another thrillingly close encounter.

The Ulsterman crashed out early on in race one but showed no ill effects from the high-speed accident during Sunday’s shorter encounter as he controlled a rapid pace from the first corner in a fast and frenetic 10 laps.

Getting the jump on pole sitter Tom Sykes into turn one together with Toprak Razgatlioglu, Rea did a stellar job of holding his ground out front despite being unable to escape a chasing pack that stretched back to seventh position.

Indeed, despite numerous changes of position behind him as they stacked up on the tail of the Kawasaki ZX-10RR, Rea held onto the lead right up until the penultimate lap when an exploratory pass by Razgatlioglu at the hairpin forced him to respond straight back at the high-speed Hayshed corner he crashed at in race one.

The Turk subsequently repeated the move on the final lap with minor contact shuffling Rea wide and seemingly on the back foot. However, a nervy few corners as Razgatlioglu attempted to control the sliding Yamaha through the final bends – where the R1 is weakest – gave Rea the opportunity to scythe back ahead on the final corner.

Prompting another slipstreaming dash to the finish line, Rea held on to win from Razgatlioglu by just 0.067s, with Scott Redding again just inches from victory in third position, 0.072secs adrift.

Indeed, it was another strong outing from Redding even if he couldn’t quite claw himself into the battle for the win. Similarly, Alex Lowes showed strong pace a day after just missing out on race one success by 0.007s en route to fourth, with Michael van der Mark again losing out in the late skirmishes to end up fifth.

Despite getting bullied down the order midway through the race, Tom Sykes held firm with the front group to give BMW a top six finish, ahead of Loris Baz, who battled with the leaders early on before fading.

On a dismal start to the day for Honda, Leon Haslam lost touch with the lead group early on when he ran wide at hairpin before fighting his way back up to eighth position, while Alvaro Bautista crashed out of the race on lap two.

Michael Ruben Rinaldi and Maximilian Scheib rounded out leading positions, the latter scoring his first ever top ten finish in WorldSBK, ahead of Sandro Cortese, Xavi Fores, an out-of-sorts Chaz Davies, Federico Caricasulo and Takumi Takahashi.

Only 16 riders took to the start of the race after both Garrett Gerloff and Eugene Laverty were ruled out through injury. The pair both suffered concussion after separate crashes during the morning warm-up session.

2020 WorldSBK Australia, Phillip Island - Superpole Race Results