Jonathan Rea cruised to a 51st career World Superbike victory after Marco Melandri retired with a bike issue in the closing stages of race one.
The original start saw Rea jump a slightly slow starting Melandri from pole, while Chaz Davies carved his way through on Xavi Fores at the Pons corner to take seventh.
Behind, Althea BMW’s Raffaele De Rosa lost the front-end of his S1000RR exiting Dry Sac. Grillini’s Ayrton Badovini braked hard to avoid the sliding De Rosa and suffered a nasty highside as a result.
The race was red-flagged as Badovini was attended to by the circuit’s medical staff.
The race was restarted over 19 laps, and once again Rea jumped Melandri from second on the grid, while Davies muscled his way through to fourth.
By lap five, Davies had moved ahead of Sykes – with whom he is battling over second in the standings with – as Melandri hounded world champion Rea for the lead.
The Italian scythed his way through on Rea on the inside of the Nieto corner on lap seven, while Davies mugged the Kawasaki rider at the first corner on the next tour.
This allowed Melandri to eke out a gap of almost a second, which remained constant despite Rea – who returned the favour on Davies with a late move at the final turn – turning up the pressure on the Ducati rider.
Having just set a new race lap record of 1m40.938s, Melandri was denied a second win of the season when his Panigale broke down at the first corner with four laps to go.
This gave Rea a clear run to the line to secure his 13th win of the yea and his 109th career podium, which puts him level with the great Carl Fogarty.
Behind, Sykes recovered from an early mistake at the Aspar corner to battle for his 100th podium, but could do nothing to overhaul Davies in the closing stages. Sykes now holds a slender six-point margin to the Ducati rider in second in the championship.
Alex Lowes led home Yamaha team-mate Michael van der Mark to complete the top five and secure pole for race two, while Sylvain Guintoli emerged from an early midfield scrap to take a fine sixth on his WorldSBK return.
Lorenzo Savadori headed Milwaukee Aprilia team-mate Euegene Laverty, who dropped down the order after he ran wide at Pons corner on lap two, in seventh, with Xavi Fores and Roman Ramos rounding out the top 10.
Leandro Mercado was promoted to 11th on the last lap when Leon Camier made an error, the Briton relegated to 12th ahead of Jordi Torres, Alessandro Andreozzi and Ondrej Jezek.
Honda’s Takumi Takahashi did crash at the final corner on the third lap, but rejoined to finish 16th. Team-mate Davide Giugliano retired in the closing stages with a technical issue. Wildcard Dominic Schmitter was also a retirement.
