Jonathan Rea pulled off a Marc Marquez style save when he lost the front of his Kawasaki through Turn 1 of Saturday's o♊pening World Superbik🔜e race at Misano.

Rea, who qualified on pole and went 'bar-to-'bar with eventual winner Michele Rin𝕴aldi through the opening corners (main pic), was chasing the Ducati rider when the moment occurred just before the midway stage of the 21 laps.

Although the Kawasaki star was able to raise his ZX-10R upright again, momentum dr𓆏agged the six-time world champion off-track,ღ handing second place to Toprak Razgatlioglu.

"I'd like to say I was learning from Marc Marquez, but in reality, it was complete luck!" said Rea. "I felt the tyre go and pushed with my knee… I was completely off the bike! It w🍌as lucky."

Rea remained in third thereafter, taking the chequered flag ജ5.1s from Rinaldi and 1.4s from Razgatlioglu's Yamaha.

The Ulsterman ♊suggested he could opt for a different specification of front tyre for Sunday's rac♒es, which he will start with a 31-point lead over nearest rival Razgatlioglu.

"I chose the new front tyre for this race. I used it in Superpole and felt quite good but we did not have a lot of information after ten laps in all. It seems like the temperature, especiaওlly in the race, meant I cooked the tyre too much. It started moving quite a lot," Rea explained.

"When I rejoined the t🍌rack [after the save] and had a gap up to Toprak it felt better, not perfect, but better. So tomorrow we need to rev𒁏isit things to see if we can be fast with our ‘normal’ front tyre.

"The new one brought some confidence on the brakes but we 🔯need to be able to fight at the end of the race. My pace was still OK for the last laps but the moment𒆙 I had in Turn One disturbed my rhythm and let Michael get away.

"He did fantastic today and the pace at the front was really good.🔯 I think tomorrow we can make a small step with the bike because I learned a lot from Michael and Toprak in Race One.

"Tomorrow we should be better prepared.”

Team-mate Alex Lowes held fifth place from lap 1 to the fl🥀ag, but also ba💞ttled front-end difficutlies.

“I was a lot worse than I expected today. In the practices I thought, ‘I feel good,’. I set lots of good laps and changed the bike a little bit on the front. In the race I di♕dn’t have the feel I needed and from the first laps I was st🅘ruggling with releasing the brake and carrying some corner speed," Lowes said.

"The front was moving a lot. I had a couple of warnings so I did not have the confidence to push like I expected. It was a shame because I hoped to be a bit faster but this was my first time 🐟racing here on the Kawasaki and obviously the temperatures c🔜ame up for the race too. So we have good information for tomorrow.”

Lowes finished ⛄13.5s behind Rinaldi and 1.3s ahead of Honda's Alvaro Bautista.