WorldSBK Results - Aragon Race 1 | Rea romps to 100th win in dominant style

Jonathan Rea’s bid to make it a seventh WorldSBK Championship title in 2021 kicked off in record-breaking fashion with a 100th career win in the opening race of the season.

The favourite heading into the first of 13 events this season, Rea started on pole and wasted no time in putting his steer on the 2021 WorldSBK season in Spain, landing the hole shot, shrugging off the keen interests of team-mate Alex Lowes before romping on to win by almost four seconds.

His success in Aragon makes him the first rider to hit the ‘ton’ in terms of WorldSBK race wins, a mantle he is likely to hold for some time given the next ‘winningest’ person on the all-time list is Carl Fogarty on 59 victories.

Indeed, while all signs had pointed to Rea and the new Kawasaki ZX-10RR being the combination to beat, many will be concerned at the gulf in performance between himself and the rest of the field.

Getting an excellent start from pole position, Rea attempted to put the hammer down early and succeeded in shaking off all but his team-mate Alex Lowes, who gamely shadowed his countryman during the first half of the race as the ZX-10RRs swelled the advantage to Scott Redding in third.

However, it remained clear Rea was in control, leaving Lowes unable to respond when he upped the pace with just under ten laps remaining,. With Lowes slipping into the clutches of the distant pack, Rea’s break was the last significant moment of the race for him until he took the chequered flag for the 100th time, 12 years after his first at Misano on the Ten Kate Honda.

Lowes held onto second place with a gusty fight back after a sudden drop in pace with eight laps to go suggested tyre woes and a sharp descent down the order. However, despite losing second place to Toprak Razgatlioglu with six to go, Lowes regrouped and pressured back, the pair trading position several times on the final lap before the Brit got the edge in the run to the line.

Despite the frustrating final result, third place for the Turk still represents a welcome return on a disappointing qualifying showing in tenth.

Redding ran third early on but had no weapons in his armoury until the very closing stages when his hard tyres brought him back into play enough to get the better of Ducati counterpart Chaz Davies, the Welshman settling for fifth having looked good for a podium earlier on.

Tom Sykes limited damage for BMW with a solid sixth from the front row of the grid, the 2011 WorldSBK champion benefitting from Alvaro Bautista crashing ahead of him on the final lap in what will be an unwelcome reminder for Honda of the Spaniard’s increasingly error-prone reputation.

A maiden winner at Aragon on the Go Eleven Ducati, Michael Ruben Rinaldi looked a shadow of that rider on his Ducati factory debut with a disappointing run to seventh position, ahead of Leon Haslam and Garrett Gerloff, who ran as high as fourth before his GRT Yamaha faded with tyre issues.

On what has been a sobering apprenticeship thus far for the WorldSSP Champion on the Pata Yamaha, Andrea Locatelli at least squeezed a top ten from his debut in tenth place, ahead of Michael van der Mark, who will just be pleased to reach the chequered flag on a weekend littered with issues and incidents on his new BMW M 1000 RR

Axel Bassani recovered from a qualifying crash to claim the rookie spoils, ahead of fellow WorldSSP graduates Isaac Vinales and Lucas Mahias in 12th, 13th and 15th, while Kohta Nozane scored on his WorldSBK debut in 14th.

2021 WorldSBK Aragon - Race Results (1)