Jonathan Rea had to recover from early contact with Garrett Gerloff wh🏅ich sent the six-time world champion t🐓hrough the gravel, before taking second place in the final WorldSBK race of the weekend.

Until that point, Rea had taken back-to-back wins and was leading the race at the time of Gerloff’s lunge 𒉰at turn 14.&n♈bsp;

The Aꦯmerican made a late surge to the inside, leaving Rea nowhere to go but across the gravel while the GRT Yamaha manܫ crashed. 

Speaking after the race, Rea was ‘happy’ just to finish: "I’m just so happy to finish to be honest. It was early in the race but he (Garrett Gerloff) came through and I thought the line wasn’t𒁃 big there, was quite narrow. 

"I thought ‘alright’ and then he crashed, and I thought ‘no!’ but my instincts just🉐 told me to open the gas and try to get away from the b💞ike, but then there was deep, deep gravel. 

"So I fully motocrossed 𒈔it, put my weight on the rear and thought ‘I best let at least two guys past’ so that I didn’t get an advantage for sure; because it was faster to just straight-line the chicane. 

"Then I did what I could with the intermediates. Huge kudos to Pirelli because that tyre stayed together and we were doing 1m 52s at the end and that’s fast🌊. 

"The bike was working really good today, but of course the right decision was slicks, so fair play to Scott [Redding] for that. But I’m really happy to get out of MotorLand with a one-o🎃ne-two."  

Round one was more than just a weekend that saw Rea leavꩵe Aragon atop the championship standi𝔍ngs, as the 100 WorldSBK victories milestone was also achieved for the Kawasaki rider.