WorldSBK Aragon Superpole Race: Jonathan Rea wins in tricky conditions

Jonathan Rea takes his 101st win in intermediate conditions.

Jonathan Rea storms to his 101st race win after his competitors’ Ducati strategy fails, it was a tough call today pre-race to determine which tyre was the best to choose for the race with many opting for the Intermediate tyre, some opted for slicks and some chose wet tyres which turned out to be the completely wrong strategy for Scott Redding.

Redding started the race battling with Rea for the first position before being dropped off fairly quickly into the clutches of Alex Lowes, Redding instantly knew he had made the wrong choice and had forced to hold on for dear life as he fell down the order losing points lap by lap shaking his head in between corners. For Kawasaki it was another perfect day, they took another 1-2 in Aragon with Rea completely disappearing off into the distance leaving Lowes to hold on to second place, these two results have instantly cemented the two riders into the first two champion positions.

Third place went to Garrett Gerloff, the American also opting for the intermediate tyres which paid off for him tremendously as he boasted some extreme speed to overtake Chaz Davies in fourth and put 4 seconds between himself and the Welshman with pace left in the bag to catch up to Alex Lowes ahead of him, eventually Gerloff settled for a strong P3 finish to give Yamaha their second rostrum finish of 2021 finishing as the fastest independent ahead of Chaz Davies in fourth place.

Michael van der Mark can officially be confirmed as having balls of steel, the flying Dutchman took a huge risk and it paid off today opting for the slick tyres on a drying track in a very ‘Jack Miller-esque’ move, the choice paid off incredibly well with the rider taking his best BMW finish so far of P5 just ahead of Toprak Razgatlioglu and Alvaro Bautista.

In eighth place was a very angry Scott Redding, the British rider had made the choice to attempt to race on the slick tyres hoping that the conditions would worsen but unfortunately for him they stayed fairly level and the intermediate tyres would reign king with more heat being able to flow through the tyres and be utilised in the right way to improve grip with Rinaldi suffering the same issues down in P11, it’ll be a race to forget but thankfully he can have another try later on today.

Japanese rider Kohta Nozanne was the fastest rookie today sat in P9, the Japanese rider is highly rated by his employers Yamaha and is slowly but surely proving why he is.

Full results –