Rea rampant at WSBK France

KAWASAKI star Jonathan Rea celebrated his first World Superbike weekend as world champion with a classic double win – his fifth of the season and his first-ever race wins at the difficult Magny-Cours circuit in France.

So different were conditions, however, that the two races could have been run at different venues, with streaming rain for race one and a bone-dry track for the second outing.

In race one the new world champion passed team-mate and closest rival Tom Sykes, who’d led almost from the start, with less than three laps to go, after Sykes made a mistake on the 17th lap of a race that had been reduced from 21 to 19 laps because of the atrocious conditions.

Sykes kept it together – and the shiny side up – to come home second, 4.7 seconds in arrears, well clear of local hero Sylvain Guintoli on the Honda, who kept his unbroken run of podium finishes at his home circuit intact.

Dutch teenager Michael van der Mark on the second Pata Honda got the best of a race-long four-way bat- tle for fourth, followed in very quick succession by Leon Camier (MV Agusta), and Ducati rider Chaz Davies.

The dry second race was a cracker, with a race-long three-way battle for the lead between Rea, Davies and Sykes that ended in that order in less than seven seconds.

Rea’s podium tally of 22 put him equal with Troy Bayliss who achieved the feat in 2002, and is the second highest number of podiums in a season in the all-time list.

Davies’ second place, on the other hand, meant that the fight with Sykes for the runner-up spot in the series will continue to the season finale under floodlights in Qatar on October 18. Davies has 383 points to Sykes’ 367, with a maximum 50 points still up for grabs.

In the World Supersports race, Kawasaki star Kenan Sofuoglu took a safe second to nail his fourth title, while the Superstock 1000 championship went to Aprilia’s Lorenzo Savadori who finished eighth.

The only South African rider at Magny-Cours, Capetonian David McFadden, rode to 16th place for Suzuki Europe in the Superstock class.