Jonathan Rea scored his second world superbike race victory of the season yesterday when he fended off the challenge of new championship leader American Ben Spies to win the second race at the Nurburgring Circuit in Germany after 20 enthralling laps.

PAIR OF ACES: Valentino Rossi after winning the San Marino MotoGP and (inset) Jonathan Rea

Rea, from second place on the grid, didn’t make the best of starts and found himself down in fifth position at the end of the first lap.

Scything through the field he hit the front on lap four only to see championship leader Noriuki Haga fight back and momentarily retake the lead going onto lap five.

Haga ran slightly wide, Rea went for the inside line and their machines touched, the Japanese championship leader sliding out of the race and out of the championship lead.

The 22-year old Ballyclare rider then had to deal with challenges from Leon Haslam and team mate Carlos Checa before Spies, recovering from a bad start, fought through to second at half race distance and started to close in on the Hannspree Ten Kate Honda rider, both men riding at lap record breaking pace.

With Spies on his tail Rea rode a phenomenal last lap setting the fastest lap of the race to hold off the Texan’s challenge to score a magnificent victory that consolidates fourth place in the championship.

Earlier in the day Rea had to settle for fourth position in the first superbike race, won by Spies, having had to ride his spare machine as his number one bike suffered clutch problems on the first lap of the race which was red flagged and re-started following a multi rider crash.

After the re-start Rea had been dicing with Haga and Spies for the lead, but was forced to drop back after running wide at the tricky first turn and losing time.

Haga and Spies diced wheel to wheel in the second half of the race as Rea dropped back into the clutches of team mate Checa, the Spanish rider grabbing third

spot from Rea five laps from the end of the race.

Rea said: “After race one, when I had issues with my number one bike and was really disappointed with fourth place, I was really motivated for race two and the guys in the garage gave me the instruction manual on how to win.

“Back on my number one machine I got a really bad start and had to be aggressive on the first couple of laps especially at turn one. Haga ran quite wide and I went on the inside line and although I didn’t see him I felt the bang and only found out after the race he had crashed.

“I gave it my all in the race and the package we had was very strong today. I knew I had to make no mistakes on the last lap, as Ben was so close.

“Breaking the lap record on that last lap was a bonus and testament to how strong the bike was, and hopefully we can carry this momentum on to the next round in Italy.”

In the world supersport race Eugene Laverty had to settle for a hard fought second place some 10 seconds adrift of the dominant championship leader Cal Crutchlow who scored a comprehensive victory to take a 22 point lead over Laverty into the final three races of the season.

Laverty was embroiled in a titanic tussle for second with Spaniard Joan Lascorz.

Eugene’s brother Michael had been dicing for 10th position only to crash at the treacherous first corner remounting to finish 18th.

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Valentino Rossi led home a Fiat Yamaha one-two as he stretched his lead in the FIM MotoGP World Championship to 30 points over Jorge Lorenzo with victory at the San Marino GP.