Portimao WSBK: Rea claims 40th career pole, Bautista only ninth

Kawasaki star Jonathan Rea scored his fifth pole position of the 2022 World Superbike season at Portimao, as runaway championship leader Alvaro Bautista qualified a season-worst ninth on his Ducati.

Rea sat nearly half a second down on early pacesetter Toprak Razgatlioglu after his first run in Saturday’s 15-minute pole shootout, but found a whopping eight tenths on his final flying lap to strengthen his status as the best qualifier of the season.

The Northern Irishman’s time of 1m39.610s was just under two tenths up on what Razgatlioglu managed on his factory Yamaha and over half a second quicker than anything witnessed in practice earlier this weekend.

It secured him his 40th career pole position in WSBK and closer to the tallies of Troy Corser and Tom Sykes.

Rea’s Kawasaki teammate Alex Lowes continued the fine form that he showed in Barcelona last month, securing yet another front row start with a time of 1m39.859s.

Andrea Locatelli equalled his best qualifying result of the season with fourth following a late 1m40.000s effort, while Loris Baz put in an impressive time aboard the Bonovo BMW to qualify fifth, three places ahead of the works M1000RR of Scott Redding.

Between Baz and Redding, Honda’s Iker Lecuona and GRT Yamaha’s Garrett Gerloff qualified sixth and seventh respectively, the two riders separated by just over a tenth of a second.

Ducati ace Bautista ended up a distant ninth after his final lap was deleted for a track limits infringement. This meant his previous time of 1m40.548s counted towards the final result, leaving him on the third row of the grid - albeit still the top Ducati in the field.

The next-best Panigale V4 R was that of his teammate Michael Ruben Rinaldi, who qualified 11th behind the second works Honda of Xavi Vierge.

Michael van der Mark was only 19th on the factory BMW on his third weekend back in WSBK after a long injury-induced layoff.

Portimao WSBK - Qualifying results:

Cla	#	Rider	Bike	Time	Gap
1	65	Jonathan Rea	Kawasaki	1'39.610
2	1	Toprak Razgatlioglu	Yamaha	1'39.772	0.162
3	22	Alex Lowes	Kawasaki	1'39.859	0.249
4	55	Andrea Locatelli	Yamaha	1'40.000	0.390
5	76	Loris Baz	BMW	1'40.242	0.632
6	7	Iker Lecuona	Honda	1'40.342	0.732
7	31	Garrett Gerloff	Yamaha	1'40.497	0.887
8	45	Scott Redding	BMW	1'40.532	0.922
9	19	Alvaro Bautista	Ducati	1'40.538	0.928
10	97	Xavi Vierge	Honda	1'40.624	1.014
11	21	Michael Ruben Rinaldi	Ducati	1'40.677	1.067
12	5	Philipp Oettli	Ducati	1'40.744	1.134
13	2	Roberto Tamburini	Yamaha	1'40.771	1.161
14	47	Axel Bassani	Ducati	1'41.000	1.390
15	44	Lucas Mahias	Kawasaki	1'41.088	1.478
16	33	Jake Gagne	Yamaha	1'41.161	1.551
17	50	Eugene Laverty	BMW	1'41.258	1.648
18	3	Kohta Nozane	Yamaha	1'41.321	1.711
19	60	Michael van der Mark	BMW	1'41.473	1.863
20	35	Hafizh Syahrin	Honda	1'41.741	2.131
21	91	Leon Haslam	Kawasaki	1'41.765	2.155
22	29	Luca Bernardi	Ducati	1'41.853	2.243
23	17	Marvin Fritz	Yamaha	1'41.912	2.302
24	36	Leandro Mercado	Honda	1'41.982	2.372
25	23	Christophe Ponsson	Yamaha	1'42.152	2.542
26	52	Oliver Konig	Kawasaki	1'43.840	4.230
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