Rea fights back with race two win, ‘I could put my bike where I wanted’
In what’s perhaps been the best ever World Superbike season thus far, round 11 in Portimao brought with it the most drama-filled weekend of the season, a weekend that saw Jonathan Rea crash twice before winning race two.
Going into the final race, Rea lost the lead at a circuit he’d won 12 times at (now 13) in both race one and the Superpole race due to unforced errors.
This allowed championship leader Toprak Razgatlioglu to open up a 49 point advantage and put one hand on the title.
However, in typical 2021 World Superbike fashion, a straight-forward race to end the weekend was far from on the agenda as Razgatlioglu suffered a second mechanical problem in just three rounds, which then caused the Yamaha man to lose the front at turn 15 - the same corner Rea crashed at in race one.
From that moment on, Rea rode a brilliant race to clinch 25 points and reduce the gap to 24.
"I made probably the best start of the season in race two. I got good track position right away in turn one, in maybe fourth or fifth, and from that point I could see that my bike was working really well," said Rea following the race.
"It was agile, I could put it where I wanted. I struggled a little bit down the straight in the headwind today.
"I changed my strategy a little but because yesterday I tried to go to the front from the first time I got clean air, but I knew I had to go at the beginning of the lap to give myself some breathing room on the straight.
"I put in my rhythm and made 1’41 laps, hitting all my marks around the track. I have to thank the guys in the team because my bike was really good from a chassis point of view.
"When I got the signal that Toprak was out of course I changed the strategy a little bit and rode to my pit board.
"The gap back to second place was going up and I was relaxed on the bike. I learned a lot from this weekend, because I made a lot of silly mistakes, being too impatient.
"So I think I need to believe that my rhythm is high and I can fight with these guys until the last lap."
