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Donington WorldSBK: Rea takes win hat-trick

Kawasaki’s Jonathan Rea fended off young gun Toprak Razgatlioglu in the second feature-length WorldSBK race to take a win hat-trick at Donington Park and increase his lead over Alvaro Bautista to almost a race win.

Razgatlioglu led twice in the 23-lap encounter but just didn’t quite have enough to snatch victory from his Kawasaki stablemate while Bautista only had a four-tenth advantage over Alex Lowes to take his sole podium of the weekend.

Lowes came from mid-pack to pass Leon Haslam for fourth with a handful of laps to go and closed down Bautista for on the last lap to only just miss a podium for Yamaha.

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A superb three-rider fight between those two Kawasaki riders, and Haslam for much of the first half of the race, ended when Bautistacame back strongly to finish third, albeit 5.930 seconds from Rea, and further behind in the championship points.

Lowes (Yamaha), Haslam and Loris Baz (Ten Kate Racing Yamaha) finished in a group just behind Bautista from fourth to sixth, and with Tom Sykes (BMW Motorrad) just off the back of it, the top seven riders finished within 8.542 seconds of each other.

Michael van der Mark (Yamaha) was an eventual eighth, with Chaz Davies (Aruba Ducati) ninth and Marco Melandri (GRT Yamaha) tenth – and almost 30 seconds back.

BMW stand-in Peter Hickman battled to 11th place but says he is unlikely to fly to Laguna for next weekend's races.

In the championship Rea leads by 24 points from Bautista, 376 to 352, with VDM on 206, Lowes on 192 and Haslam on 187.

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