Rea rules with monumental fifth World Superbike title
Rea toughs it out in France for title number five
By Greg Haines
No-one was more surprised than Jonathan Rea himself as the Northern Irishman stormed to a recordbreaking fifth World Superbike title in France on Sunday to surpass the four titles of Carl Fogarty. And for the third year in succession, the now 32-year-old clinched the crown with victory at Magny-Cours.
It’s the first time in 20 years that a new record of World Superbike titles has been achieved. Not only is Rea an 83-time race winner and 162-time podium finisher but his clinching of this year’s championship with six races still to run follows a seemingly impossible U-turn of fortunes following Alvaro Bautista’s superb start to the campaign.
“This has been the toughest season of my life from both a mechanical and mental point of view,” said the rider from Ballymena. “We managed to keep with it, believing in it and never giving up. This looked like it wasn’t going to happen. All of those second places at the beginning of the year won this championship.
“I never even thought about the championship here. We had zero communication about what would have happened if I won. I wish my wife, Tatia, and our two boys, Jake and Tyler, were here right now.” Just 16 races earlier, Rea had been 61 points behind Ducati’s Bautista before a dramatic turn of events saw the Spaniard have five race crashes across June and July. In France, any chance Bautista had of maintaining an attack evaporated on the second lap of Sunday’s final race when he crashed again into the fallen Toprak Razgatlioglu’s bike. The weekend was far from easy for Rea as poor weather in Friday practice prevented anyone lead and Ducati’s Chaz Davies went down due to electrical problems which affected his engine braking.
But even though he lost only narrowly to Razgatlioglu in the first two races, Rea showed how he still strives for perfection, characterising his ‘Ninja Spirit’ over the last five years. For the second season in a row, his title celebrations came with a race victory at Magny-Cours. Rea’s route to the title, p32 establish a good base setup. Further doubts came when Rea regretted his decision to slow in the closing stages of Saturday’s race only to be caught and passed by Puccetti’s Toprak Razgatlioglu. But the weekend also featured one of World Superbike’s very best races as the series celebrated its 800th race on Saturday.
Rea appeared to be a target as practically all of his rivals pulled especially-hard overtaking manoeuvres on the soon to be crowned champion. It was also a race in which Yamaha’s Michael van der Mark crashed from the