Superbike – Estoril – Race 2: Rea takes advantage of his opponents' mistakes to win again!

The Kawasaki rider scored his second victory of the day, after taking advantage of Scott Redding's crash and the double penalty inflicted on Toprak Razgatlioglu.

Like Scott Redding during Race 1, to hope to beat Jonathan Rhea today we had to get a better start than him and immediately take the reins of the race. In this exercise, Toprak Razgatlioglu certainly did too much, and was guilty of an early departure. An excess of haste which undoubtedly surprised the Kawasaki rider, who let Redding slip into the lead even before the first braking and subsequently experienced a messy first lap which he finished in sixth position.

Not a big deal for the six-time World Champion, who benefited from the two long laps of Razgatlioglu and the clash between Garrett gerloff et Michael Ruben Rinaldi to make up a good part of his gap on the race lead.

 

 

Starting grid for Race 2:

 

Penalties and skirmishes benefit Rea

With a second behind Redding, Rea once again had the opportunity to methodically think about his comeback, establishing contact with his opponent on the 13th lap, before going on the attack two loops later.

The number 1 thus went inside the Ducati rider in turn 1, a maneuver to which the latter reacted perfectly, crossing his trajectory to benefit from better acceleration and regain the upper hand. But Rea held his prey and launched another attack a few turns later, leaving his victim to try to respond once again, this time without success. If Razgatlioglu had done too much at the start, Redding will have done too much in trying to respond to this takeover.

In fact, the former MotoGP rider made a mistake, seeing his hopes of a second victory in Portugal go up in smoke. A hard blow for the Ducati factory team, which therefore deplores a very deleterious blank result in the championship in this Race 2.

 

 

A top-notch performance for Davies

The second part of the event was just a walk in the park for Rea, an easy winner ahead of a Chaz Davies deserving and started from ninth position on the grid. The performance of Razgatlioglu also deserves to be mentioned, the Yamaha rider who was able to remobilize after his double penalty to move up to third position and sign a third podium in as many races this weekend.

alex lowes finished at the foot of the podium, after a good performance which saw him make his way from tenth place on the grid. The Englishman finishes in front Andrea Locatelli, author of a solid race and who finished in front Michael van der Mark. The Dutchman, just like in Race 1, produced a first-class performance, after starting from 14th place.

 

 

Álvaro Bautista inserts himself between the two BMW drivers, Tom Sykes finishing the event in eighth position. Eugene Laverty, after having evolved in the top 5 for a while, had to settle for ninth place at the finish in front Tito Rabat, who thus obtained a third top 10 in as many races at Estoril.

Beyond the top 10, you have to go down to 12th place to find Leon Haslam, and in the 14th for Redding, who still took two points after managing to restart after his fall. Lucas Mahias takes the last point in play, while his French compatriot, Christophe Ponsson, could not do better than 17th. Finally, note the abandonment of Jonas Folger at the start of the race.

 

Summary of the results of the 2021 edition:

WSBK Superbike Estoril	October 2020	May 2021
FP1	1'37.181 Scott Redding	1'36.920 Toprak Razgatlioglu
FP2	1'36.886 Scott Redding	1'37.284 Toprak Razgatlioglu
FP3	1'36.770 Scott Redding	1'36.389 Scott Redding
Super poles	1'36.154 Toprak Razgatlioglu	1'35.876 Jonathan Rea
Race 1	Razgatlioglu, Davies, Gerloff	Redding, Razgatlioglu, Rea
Warm Up	1'36.424 Toprak Razgatlioglu	1'36.416 Jonathan Rea
Superpole race	Razgatlioglu, Gerloff, Van der Mark	Rea, Razgatlioglu, Redding
Race 2	Davies, Redding, Razgatlioglu	Rea, Davies, Razgatlioglu
All time lap record	1'36.154 Toprak Razgatlioglu	1'35.876 Jonathan Rea

 

Superbike – Estoril – Race 2 results:

Credit classification and photos: WorldSBK.com