Honda's Jonathan Rea fought his way through the World Superbike field in today's second race at Assen to pass Sylvain Guintoli with three laps left and deny the Frenchman a double win after he took victory in the opening leg earlier today with Eugene Laverty bagging his first podium of the year.
Reigning world champion Carlos Checa had a shocker, opting for full wets and having to pit to change after four laps, thus ending any chance of a decent points haul and now slips a point behind Max Biaggi in the title chase.
Rea was battered back into seventh place in the opening laps on a drying track as Jakub Smrz, who had an intermediate front on his Effenbert Ducati, cleared off into the distance with Leon Haslam, running the same setup, gave chase.
However the Isle of Man resident, who had slicks front and rear, slowly moved his way forward to take the win. Rea, who lost the nail from his ring finger in his race-one crash, had opted for the harder-compound rear Pirelli and had to wait until the tyre came to him before he could up the pace.
Guintoli opted for front and rear slicks and, after getting a poor start, also had to work his way through but slid up to third and then set about chasing down Haslam and Smrz. Team-mate Smrz had gone for a front intermediate which gave up the ghost halfway through and Guintoli was able to take the lead, after passing Haslam, with five laps to go.
As Rea's tyres started to work, he was able to make his way on to the rear wheel of Guintoli, who had opted for the softer rear compound, and he just couldn't keep the Honda man behind him. Smrz crashed out of third when he got tangled up behind backmarker Mark Aitchison and went down at 120mph, fortunately unhurt.
Laverty, running an intermediate front, ran out of grip at half-distance but was able to fend off a late challenge from Haslam after passing him with ten laps to go. The second BMW of Marco Melandri was also in the mix at the end and he beat Haslam to fourth by just two one-thousandths of a second as they crossed the line.
Tom Sykes looked to have used his wet suspension setup with slicks and, after running strongly off the line, slid back to take sixth place with Ayrton Badovini seventh, Max Biaggi was eighth, Davide Guigliano ninth and Michel Fabrizio tenth.
Fixi Suzuki's Leon Camier and John Hopkins have struggled to find grip all weekend and finished in 14th and 11th respectively with the latter using an intermediate setup for race two. After challenging for a top-six place early on, Chaz Davies crashed out on lap 12.
