Jonathan Rea has revealed he had to push to his limits to keep his concentration as he rode through treacherous conditions to win today’s World Superbike race at the Lausitzring.

The reigning champion managed to get his title defence back on track after two DNFs on the bounce, while main rival and team-mate Tom Sykes fell.

Sykes was able to re-join and finish the race 12th, but Rea took a commanding win by more than nine seconds to boost his points tally to 393 compared to Sykes’ 346, and admitted that today’s success was mainly thanks to the weather.

“Today I had a bike that I felt very comfortable on. I was both excited and nervous because in this condition you can throw away many points, and with my championship lead now being eaten into at a rapid rate in the last two races it was important to capitalise,” he said.

“The team gave me an incredible bike, wet or dry because in morning warm up we learnt a lot with our set up and I’m really with today’s efforts, it makes up a bit for yesterday’s blunder.”

With Sykes crashing out early on, it looked as if Rea had an easy run to the chequered flag, but he says this was far from the case.

“Anything can happen in these wet races. Tyre drop can be severe or it can be conservative, depending how fast the track dries, and having no experience of Lausitzring I didn’t know how fast the track would dry.

“After 10 laps I understood that it wasn’t drying so hard so there was no reason to try and conserve the tyre to keep pushing on, and whilst the surface water in some areas was zero, in other areas it was quite a lot.

"Like on the back straight towards T six there was a lot of aquaplaning on the rear, a lot of wheel spin in fourth gear so we were just trying to be as calm as possible.

“At the front I was quite nervous seeing my board go up and up but the same thing happened at Magny Cours three or four years ago when I had a 10 second gap then crashed at the chicane.

“I just tried to keep my concentration at a maximum and the only way I could do that was keep my pace and not back off or be conservative. 57s were my pace and I could manage that right to the end.”