Qatar WSBK: Rea wins despite Davies charge

The Kawasaki rider grabbed the holeshot from pole position, and was never removed from the lead for the entire 17 laps despite a moment late on allowing Davies to mount pressure on him.

Rea led Yamaha rider Lowes, GRT’s Sandro Cortese and Davies on the opening lap, with Tom Sykes dropping to fourth after running too into Turn 1 having briefly held second.

The BMW rider’s race would last just 15 more corners, as he would run into the back of Leon Haslam’s Kawasaki at Turn 1 at the start of lap two.

Rea and Lowes quickly broke away from the chasing Cortese and Davies, with the Ducati rider seizing third from the GRT Yamaha rider at Turn 7 on the sixth tour.

The 2020 KRT teammates ran line astern for half the race, with the gap between Lowes and Rea hovering around the three-tenth mark.

Rea began to open his advantage out slightly to half a second by lap 10, while Davies wiped time out of Lowes over the next few tours.

Davies moved ahead of Lowes at the final corner to begin the chase on Rea with five laps to go, and was thrown a chance when the Kawasaki rider had a moment through Turn 8 and ran wide at the corner after as a result.

This allowed Davies to close to within eight tenths of the lead, though Rea regrouped and soon had the gap back out to over a second to ease to the chequered flag to wrap up Kawasaki’s fifth-successive manufacturers’ championship.

Davies recovery from 12th on the grid concluded with runner-up spot to Rea, while Lowes’s hopes of claiming third in the standings took a step forward after he held third and Yamaha teammate Michael van der Mark was pipped to sixth by Haslam.

Alvaro Bautista completed the top four on the second works Ducati, while Loris Baz took the chequered flag in seventh on the Ten Kate Yamaha ahead of Markus Reiterberger (BMW), Go Eleven’s Eugene Laverty and Honda’s Leon Camier.

Toprak Razgatlioglu was a factor in the battle for fifth with Haslam, van der Mark and Baz for much of the race, but the Puccetti rider ended up 11th after running off track at Turn 6 in the latter stages.

Leandro Mercado was forced to retire due to a mechanical issue with his Orelac Kawasaki, while Pedercini’s Jordi Torres didn’t even make the start after crashing at Turn 1 on the warm-up lap.

Race results

Cla	#	Rider	Bike	Laps	Time	Gap
1	1	Jonathan Rea	Kawasaki	17	33'34.518
2	7	Chaz Davies	Ducati	17	33'37.250	02.732
3	22	Alex Lowes	Yamaha	17	33'39.941	05.423
4	19	Alvaro Bautista	Ducati	17	33'42.561	08.043
5	91	Leon Haslam	Kawasaki	17	33'52.238	17.720
6	60	Michael van der Mark	Yamaha	17	33'52.256	17.738
7	76	Loris Baz	Yamaha	17	33'52.694	18.176
8	28	Markus Reiterberger	BMW	17	33'54.997	20.479
9	50	Eugene Laverty	Ducati	17	33'59.018	24.500
10	2	Leon Camier	Honda	17	34'03.838	29.320
11	54	Toprak Razgatlioglu	Kawasaki	17	34'07.684	33.166
12	33	Marco Melandri	Yamaha	17	34'09.191	34.673
13	21	Michael Ruben Rinaldi	Ducati	17	34'17.179	42.661
14	23	Ryuichi Kiyonari	Honda	17	34'24.538	50.020
15	52	Alessandro Del Bianco	Honda	17	34'29.003	54.485
16	9	Dominic Schmitter	Yamaha	17	34'43.100	01'08.582
	36	Leandro Mercado	Kawasaki	6	11 laps
	11	Sandro Cortese	Yamaha	5	12 laps
	66	Tom Sykes	BMW	1	16 laps
	81	Jordi Torres	Kawasaki	0
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