Qatar WSBK: Rea breaks points record with Race 2 win
Jonathan Rea capped off the 2017 World Superbike season with a dominant win in the Sunday Qatar race, and broke the record for most points collected in a single campaign.
Jonathan Rea, Kawasaki Racing
Gold and Goose / Motorsport Images
Rea ended the season with 556 points, beating Colin Edwards' previous record of 552 from 2002.
The Northern Irishman took first place when early leader Chaz Davies had a major moment on corner exit.
The Ducati rider narrowly avoided crashing but lost a lot of momentum, and Rea easily went past the Welshman.
Despite starting from eighth on the grid, Davies had needed just two corners to take the lead at the start, passing pole-sitter Eugene Laverty.
After Davies dropped behind Rea, the duo remained reasonably close but never changed positions again, and finished the race in first and second respectively.
Davies completed the season as the runner-up after Tom Sykes, who was 10 points adrift of the Welshman before the race, crashed out.
Sykes was one of three big-name early retirements along with Jordi Torres, who ended his Althea BMW career with a spectacular highside crash, and Lorenzo Savadori, whose Aprilia slowed with an issue.
Yamaha duo Alex Lowes and Michael van der Mark managed to keep up with the leading duo throughout the race, the former passing the latter for the final podium position with five laps remaining.
Lowes collected his fourth podium of the season, and secured fifth in the standings behind the quartet of factory Kawasaki and Ducati bikes.
Barni Ducati's Xavi Fores beat factory rider Marco Melandri for fifth, as Laverty dropped down to seventh place.
The Irishman outduelled Sylvain Guintoli (Puccetti Kawasaki) for the position, as Leon Camier (MV Agusta) and Roman Ramos (GoEleven Kawasaki) completed the top 10.
Race 2 results
Cla | Rider | Bike | Time |
---|---|---|---|
1 | Jonathan Rea | Kawasaki | - |
2 | Chaz Davies | Ducati | 1.961 |
3 | Alex Lowes | Yamaha | 4.185 |
4 | Michael van der Mark | Yamaha | 5.843 |
5 | Xavi Fores | Ducati | 8.987 |
6 | Marco Melandri | Ducati | 14.675 |
7 | Eugene Laverty | Aprilia | 16.251 |
8 | Sylvain Guintoli | Kawasaki | 16.675 |
9 | Leon Camier | MV Agusta | 19.607 |
10 | Roman Ramos | Kawasaki | 20.628 |
11 | Raffaele De Rosa | BMW | 26.043 |
12 | Jake Gagne | Honda | 32.656 |
13 | Alessandro Andreozzi | Yamaha | 41.197 |
14 | Ondrej Jezek | Kawasaki | 41.844 |
15 | Roberto Rolfo | Kawasaki | 47.116 |
16 | Jeremy Guarnoni | Kawasaki | 2 laps |
Lorenzo Savadori | Aprilia | ||
Tom Sykes | Kawasaki | ||
Jordi Torres | BMW |
Be part of Motorsport community
Join the conversationShare Or Save This Story
Subscribe and access Motorsport.com with your ad-blocker.
From Formula 1 to MotoGP we report straight from the paddock because we love our sport, just like you. In order to keep delivering our expert journalism, our website uses advertising. Still, we want to give you the opportunity to enjoy an ad-free and tracker-free website and to continue using your adblocker.
Top Comments