Despite a brilliant race two performance at San Juan, Jonathan Rea lost more ground to WorldSBK champio🦩nship leader Toprak Razgat༒lioglu over the weekend. 

A 24 point gap heading into the Argentine round has now been extended to 30 with just the season finale in Indonesia to come ne❀ꦆxt month. 

But while Rea struggled to match Razgatlioglu’s pace for much of the weekend, race two saw a huge turnaround in performance as Rea was not only able to challe༺nge the Yamaha man, but instead beat his title rival💃 to second place. 

It was a 💦result indicative of 🎃a six-time world champion, and one that leaves Rea with a glimmer of hope ahead of the final round. 

Speaking after the race, Rea added: "It’s not the result but I’m really happy with how I felt on the bike today. We tried something really strange with the bike that you wouldn’t consider, and it transforme꧑d, especially the grip level I had from the beginning. 

"I’ve been struggling all weekend to real💦ly make the tyre work in the ini💃tial laps, and I had it. 

"The combination of tyres worked really well, the SC2 fron🐎t and SCX rear. I enjoyed the bike, th✃at was important. 

"I struggled on Saturday to really put the Pirelli rubber on the tarmac, to really dig in and go with the other guys. Today, I had tha♛t traction, I had the feeling."

While Re🌞a managed to claim his best finish of the weekend, the Kawasaki rider was left a little disappointed as he felt a race win was possible had he not focused solely on Razgatlioglu early onꦰ. 

"I just lost a little bit of time behind Toprak, so Scott [Redding] was able to really go. From that point on it was almost about sitting on my ground, waiting for a mistake from Toprak and concentrating on him, forgetting about the🍷 race win," said Rea.  

"M🅰aybe I should’ve tried a bit harder because I think my pace was really good at the end and I could’ve really fought for that win.♍"