Rea's third double win in 2015

Kawasaki's Jonathan Rea scored two convincing world superbike wins at Imola on May 10, with his teammate Tom Sykes second both times.

Rea has now won eight of the 10 races run so far in 2015, and he now enjoys a huge 87pt advantage over second-placed Leon Haslam (Aprilia) in the standings.

“It has been incredible this weekend and I do not know what to say because this kind of run has never happened to me before," said Rea. "I am just enjoying the moment. The key to the weekend was working hard… to make sure we had a package we could fight with.

"I was honestly a little bit worried about the six-lap first race because we were not really set up to be so strong in the beginning of the race but we were able to win. In race two I watched the gap behind. When the gap got to one second I thought ‘keep going and no mistakes’.”

IMOLA RESULTS AND STANDINGS

The opening race was initially red flagged and restarted because of crash involving David Salom (Kawasaki). Prior to the stoppage, Davide Giugliano (Ducati) had the packed grandstands all around the track on their feet, leading from the start before proceeding to take the fight to Sykes and Rea, the trio holding a comfortable 10-second lead at the time the race was stopped.

The pace in the restart was electric, as Sykes and Rea pushed each other to the limit. A lap record on lap two for Rea saw him pass his teammate, only for Sykes to respond with an even faster lap to pile on the pressure.

A tense final lap saw Rea cling on to claim his 22nd career win ahead of Sykes, Giugliano, Haslam and reigning world champion Sylvain Guintoli (Honda).

Race two went the full 19-lap distance with Rea and Sykes again in command, claiming their second 1-2 finish of the day. After a second technical fault for Chaz Davies (Ducati), the final podium position went to Jordi Torres (Aprilia) from Giugliano and Ayrton Badovini (BMW).

Guintoli and his teammate Michael van der Mark both crashed out before half distance as did Haslam (Aprilia). A number of other retirements meant only 13 riders completed the race.

The 170-lap world supersport race was won by Kenan Sofuoglu (Kawasaki) after another intriguing dual between the Turkish rider and one of his closest rivals Jules Cluzel (MV Agusta) on the final lap. The pair smashed the lap record repeatedly as they pulled away from the chasing pack with Sofuoglu eventually taking the win, the 30th of his career and the third in a row in 2015, to extend his championship lead after Cluzel made the smallest mistake to miss out on the victory by 0.883s.

Last year’s race winner Lorenzo Zanetti (MV Agusta was unable to live with the pace of the front two, having to be content with third after the Italian overhauled Kawasaki pair PJ Jacobsen and Marco Faccani, who were fourth and fifth respectively.

Australia’s Aiden Wagner finished 14th, his first European race with the Kawasaki Intermoto Ponyexpress team, with his compatriot Glenn Scott (Honda) a DNF.