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Assen WSBK: Rea claims 100th race win for Kawasaki

Jonathan Rea claimed a historic 100th World Superbike win as a Kawasaki rider after beating Ducati’s Alvaro Bautista in a shortened Superpole race at Assen.

Jonathan Rea, Kawasaki Racing Team WSBK

Jonathan Rea, Kawasaki Racing Team WSBK

Gold and Goose / Motorsport Images

At the start of the race, reigning champion Toprak Razgatlioglu held the lead from pole position on his Yamaha, with Bautista sprinting from fifth to second ahead of Rea.

The top three riders started quickly pulling away from the rest of the field, with Razgatlioglu holding a narrow lead over Bautista and Rea.

The status quo was maintained until the sixth lap when Bautista dived down the inside of Razgatlioglu into Turn 8 to take the lead, with Rea also passing the Turkish rider just four corners later to demote him to third.

Bautista and Rea then indulged in a battle of their own, with Rea claiming the lead on the final lap to score his second win of the weekend and extend his lead in the championship.

Bautista was lucky in the end to hold on to second place, with Razgatlioglu finishing just 0.047s behind in a drag race to the finish line.

Andrea Locatelli bagged a solid haul of points on the second Yamaha to finish fourth, while MotoGP concert Iker Lecuona put on another strong performance on the Honda to grab fifth at the finish.

The top independent rider in the field was Bonovo BMW’s Loris Baz, who beat the GRT Yamaha of Garrett Gerloff by just under a second to sixth place.

Michael Ruben Rinaldi (Ducati) and Axel Bassani (Motocorsa) claimed the final points in eighth and ninth respectively ahead of Philipp Oettl (Go Eleven), while factory BMW rider Scott Redding missed out on a top 10 finish in 11th.

Kawasaki’s Alex Lowes suffered a second retirement in two races and will have to start this weekend’s final full-distance contest from the back of the pack.

The Superpole race ran to only nine laps after wildcard entrant Gabriele Ruiu stalled his BMW on the grid.

Assen WSBK - Superpole race results:

Cla # Rider Bike Gap
1 65 United Kingdom Jonathan Rea
Kawasaki
2 19 Spain Alvaro Bautista
Ducati 0.220
3 1 Turkey Toprak Razgatlioglu
Yamaha 0.267
4 55 Italy Andrea Locatelli
Yamaha 6.959
5 7 Spain Iker Lecuona
Honda 11.997
6 76 France Loris Baz
BMW 12.953
7 31 United States Garrett Gerloff
Yamaha 13.410
8 21 Italy Michael Ruben Rinaldi
Ducati 13.512
9 47 Italy Axel Bassani
Ducati 13.567
10 5 Philipp Oettl
Ducati 13.871
11 45 United Kingdom Scott Redding
BMW 14.239
12 97 Spain Xavi Vierge
Honda 16.491
13 44 France Lucas Mahias
Kawasaki 16.800
14 3 Japan Kohta Nozane
Yamaha 18.989
15 60 Netherlands Michael van der Mark
BMW 20.625
16 2 Italy Roberto Tamburini
Yamaha 21.463
17 91 United Kingdom Leon Haslam
Kawasaki 23.762
18 36 Argentina Leandro Mercado
Honda 23.998
19 23 France Christophe Ponsson
Yamaha 24.207
20 29 San Marino Luca Bernardi
Ducati 25.949
21 16 Italy Gabriele Ruiu
BMW 33.209
22 35 Malaysia Hafizh Syahrin
Honda 33.519
23 52 Oliver Konig
Kawasaki 33.717
22 United Kingdom Alex Lowes
Kawasaki

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