Three podiums for Rea in Superbike

After the long summer break, the Superbike World Championship has entered its home straight with a stopover in Nevers, at the Magny-Cours circuit. And Jonathan Rea did pretty well at the French round. The six-time world champion, who will be leaving the Kawasaki team at the end of the season, started the weekend with the fifth fastest time in Superpole, which allowed him to start from the second row on the grid. In Race 1, Rea first had to get past Garett Gerloff and his team-mate before taking third place on lap five. He never relinquished that position until the finish. "I thought for a moment that I could catch Toprak (Razgatlioglu) and Michael (Rinaldi), but in the end I couldn't manage it," explained the Brit afterwards. The following day, he took advantage of a coming together between Bautista and Rinaldi to take second place in the Sprint race. "But Alvaro was able to remount and overtake me," said Rea. Third place was again his position at the finish of Race 2, a race run in two stages after it was interrupted by Dominique Aegerter's crash.

“I'm really happy to have finished on the podium three times this weekend," said the Kawasaki rider. “On Friday I felt I had a good pace, but then we didn't go in the best direction with the set-up. In Race 1 and even in the Superpole race, I wasn't completely in tune with my bike. In the second race, I felt much better from the start. I thought I could fight with Alvaro, but he was on a different level. I then found myself battling with Toprak. He's very strong on this circuit and I put up a good fight, which means we found some interesting settings, particularly in terms of motricity." With these three podiums, Rea made Magny Cours his second best weekend of the season and consolidated his third place in the championship. He is now 34 points clear of fourth-placed man Andrea Locatelli. For Alex Lowes, the French round of the World Superbike Championship came to a premature end. “We got off to a good start," explained the Brit. “I was fourth for a long time in Race 1, and I was pleased with how everything was going, even if a technical problem in the last few laps saw me drop back to eighth. However, in the Sprint race, my knee locked up and I had to stop. And I wasn't able to start Race 2. We now have around ten days to find the cause of this problem and get it treated.