IN
THE
WIND
P44
REA BUILDS
THE LEGEND
H
aving made a very big mark
in WorldSBK history last
time out in France by winning an
unprecedented third consecutive
WorldSBK Championship, Jona-
than Rea (Kawasaki) achieved
a few more landmarks at Jerez,
Spain, October 21-22.
He took his 51st and 52nd
wins, drawing himself level with
triple champion (just not con-
secutively) Troy Bayliss in the
process. They are tied now as
the second most successful
WorldSBK race winners of all
time, with only four-time World
Champion (again, not consecu-
tively) Carl Fogarty out on his
own with 59.
Rea has his second race win
of the Jerez weekend—the clear-
est and most emphatic one—to
thank for moving ahead of
Fogarty in the number of career
podiums he has scored. Foggy
has 109, Rea 110 and only Haga
(116) and Corser (130) have more
top-three finishes than Rea.
Rea was ebullient and sport-
ing in his comments after his
race one win on Saturday—his
first ever at Jerez. "It is so, so
nice to tick that box," he said. "I
really wanted it. I am really sorry
for Marco because he did not
deserve that (mechanical DNF)
and he did an absolutely incred-
ible race."
In race two's restart Rea's
team made a change in his
electronics to allow him to use
first gear in the early laps and
Rea used it well, and also what
he says is his Kawasaki's nimble
nature, to get away from the
pack at his record pace.
The Jerez weekend podiums
make dull reading for some, with
Kawasakis and Ducatis only up
there, once again, but this week-
end was far from predictable,
partly as the Jerez circuit got a
resurface recently, and partly
because Ducati experienced
some sudden reliability issues at
awkward times.
There were a rash of crashes
on Friday, with Rea and Davies
among the big-name fallers. Rea
bashed his left elbow and it was
swollen from then on, but Davies
escaped lightly when his bike
engine stopped just as he was
entering the last corner early in a
session, and he fell, tangled up
with his bike into the gravel.
His teammate Marco Melandri
Jonathan Rea simply can't
be stopped in 2017 and made
it another double win.
