VOLUME 58 ISSUE 27 JULY 7, 2021 P75
for a good couple hundred feet.
He regained his track position in
second but lost significant time
to Razgatlioglu.
Rea closed in for a while, but
in the end, Razgatlioglu would
have won by more than just over
two seconds had he not been
running out of fuel on the final
lap. (Yes, really.)
With Rea a safe second, third
on the podium in the opener was
Alex Lowes (Kawasaki Racing
Team). From a second-row start,
he dropped to eighth, then went
sixth, and then he and a warring
faction, including Michael van
der Mark (BMW), Tom Sykes
(BMW) and Garrett Gerloff
(Yamaha), battled for the last top-
three spot.
In race one, Rea made the
best of the opportunity to get a
jump on the rest but the treach-
erous and ever-changing track
conditions meant that he had a
real moment into turn one, as
did many others.
Amazingly, from the 13th spot
on the grid, Razgatlioglu found
the chance to aggressively ride
on the narrowest of dry lines
when some others in front went
wide. He was up to second
place after eight corners.
Half a lap or so later, he was
through on Rea for the lead. Not
long after that Rea misjudged
things on the blind entrance to
the Hollywood right-hander, as
he pushed to keep Razgatlioglu
within his orbit, and ran off track
Garrett Gerloff (31)
made up for the
disappointment of
crashing in race
one with a race-two
podium.
