Rea sat nearly half a second down on early pacesetter Toprak Razgatlioglu after his first run in Saturday’s 15-minute pole shootout, but found a whopping eight tenths on his final flying lap to strengthen his status as the best qualifier of the season.
The Northern Irishman’s time of 1m39.610s was just under two tenths up on what Razgatlioglu managed on his factory Yamaha and over half a second quicker than anything witnessed in practice earlier this weekend.
It secured him his 40th career pole position in WSBK and closer to the tallies of Troy Corser and Tom Sykes.
Rea’s Kawasaki teammate Alex Lowes continued the fine form that he showed in Barcelona last month, securing yet another front row start with a time of 1m39.859s.
Andrea Locatelli equalled his best qualifying result of the season with fourth following a late 1m40.000s effort, while Loris Baz put in an impressive time aboard the Bonovo BMW to qualify fifth, three places ahead of the works M1000RR of Scott Redding.
Between Baz and Redding, Honda’s Iker Lecuona and GRT Yamaha’s Garrett Gerloff qualified sixth and seventh respectively, the two riders separated by just over a tenth of a second.
Ducati ace Bautista ended up a distant ninth after his final lap was deleted for a track limits infringement. This meant his previous time of 1m40.548s counted towards the final result, leaving him on the third row of the grid – albeit still the top Ducati in the field.
The next-best Panigale V4 R was that of his teammate Michael Ruben Rinaldi, who qualified 11th behind the second works Honda of Xavi Vierge.
Michael van der Mark was only 19th on the factory BMW on his third weekend back in WSBK after a long injury-induced layoff.
Portimao WSBK – Qualifying results:
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