Jonathan Rea won the 2017 World Superbike championship after cruising to victory at a wet Magny-Cours from pole position.
The Kawasaki rider was 1.2 seconds clear of the field in qualifying, and stamped his authority from the off in the race, taking the holeshot and going 2.4s ahead of the battling Tom Sykes and Chaz Davies.
Sykes – still suffering the aftereffects of surgery on a broken finger and wrist from just a fortnight ago – initially dropped behind the Ducati rider after that first lap encounter, but took second away from the Welshman on lap three.
Not long after, Davies began to dramatically drop off the pace as he visibly scrabbled for grip on his development rear wet tyre, and soon found himself losing ground to Alex Lowes, Leon Camier and Ducati team-mate Marco Melandri.
As the race wore on, Rea continued to extend his lead over second-placed Sykes, who had Melandri chasing him down.
With four laps to go, Melandri had closed the gap to Sykes down to just 2.6s, the Italian taking further massive chunks of time out of the Kawasaki rider over the next two laps.
On the penultimate lap, Melandri dove up the inside of Sykes at Turn 2, but the pair made contact as the British rider moved back over to take the apex of Turn 3 and the gap opened up to 1.5s.
Melandri was able to regroup and close the Kawasaki rider down, this time cleanly moving through at Turn 2. However, Sykes nailed his exit from the Adelaide hairpin and retook second.
The Italian struck back at Turn 9, and this time held onto second across the line for his 11th podium of his comeback season in WorldSBK ahead of Sykes.
At the front, Rea cruised across the line to secure his third WorldSBK title, becoming the first rider in history to win three championships consecutively. He now matches Troy Bayliss‘ tally.
Leon Camier took the chequered flag in fourth after overhauling Lowes on lap eight and will start on pole on Sunday, while Eugene Laverty lead home Leandro Mercado for sixth.
Davies’ demise continued right to the flag, with Honda’s Davide Giugliano and Yamaha’s Michael van der Mark, who crashed on the second lap, passing the ailing Ducati rider in the closing stages and shuffling him back to 10th.
Lorenzo Savadori, Roman Ramos, Raffele De Rosa, Jordi Torres and Riccardo Russo were the last of the points scorers.
Xavi Fores collided with van der Mark’s stricken Yamaha on the second lap at Adelaide, but was able to rejoin the race – albeit down at the back of the field. However, the Spaniard pulled out of the race on lap 19.
