Jonathan Rea had to recover from early contact with Garrett Gerloff which sent the six-ꦺtime world champion through the gravel, before taking second place in the final WorldSBK race of the 🙈weekend.

Until that point,ꦦ Rea had taken back-to-back wins and was leading the race at the time of Gerloff’s l🐷unge at turn 14. 

Th🙈e American made a late surge to the inside, leaving Rea nowhere to♑ go but across the gravel while the GRT Yamaha man crashed. 

Speaking after the race, Rea was ‘happy’ just to finish: "I’m just so happy to finish to b♈e honest. It was early in the race but he (Garrett Gerloff) came through and I thought the line wasn’t 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 bike, but then there was deep, deep gravel. 

"So I fully motocrossed it, put my weight on the rear and thought ‘I best let at le⛎ast two guys past’ so that I didn’t get an advanta𒁏ge 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 doin☂g 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 t♔o get out of MotorLand with a one-one-two."  

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