Jonathan Rea may have been unable to contain the Ducati of Scott Redding in Saturday's opening🍌 Wo🌜rld Superbike race at the Navarra circuit, but he still increased his world championship lead by four hard-fought points.

Starting on pole position, the Kawasaki rider lost the holeshot to Redding into turn one, but swiftly retaliated a few corners later to lead the field for the openingꦡ laps.

However, Redding kept in his wheeltracks and ultimately slipstreamed aro꧑und the ZX-10 rider on the home straight at ꦅthe start of lap 6 of 23.

Some big moments for Rea, including a front-end slide that sent his outside foot waving in the air, helped the Englishman escape to a 2.5-second victory, bu𓄧t Rea was still a safe 3.4s clear of nearest title rival Toꦕprak Razgatlioglu, in third.

"I was a little bit nervous about the start of the race. It w💮as very important to be at the front and we had quite a good start, but Scott was just a little bit better," Rea said.

"At the beginning I felt I could go to the front and when Scott went quite wide in T5 and T6 I went on the inside and passed him. From there I just kept m♓y rhythm until he blasted me on the straight.

"After that I thought, ’I’m there🍷’ but then the front started to heat up, stability started to go down and the front was moving.

"Over-puꦜshing the front, I had a few slides and enough to tell me to brake a bit earlier. I lost as much as one-second during one mistake and Scott went away.

"I did not feel he was destr🅷oying us lap-by-lap when🎶 it was constant, the gap was quite similar.

"I felt really good in the first two sectors, stronger than Scot, but I was pushing the fron💯♏t too much in those slow turns from Turn 9 to the end of the lap. But I could control the gap to Toprak quite easily.

"Hopefully we can make some chan꧋ges on the front tomorrow to make a step forward.”

Rea will start Sunday's pair of ra👍ces with a seven-point lead over Razgatlioglu, with Reddiꩲng 45-points adrift in third.

Team-mate Alex Lowes finished in fifth place.

ꩲ"I had a good start and was fourth until Toprak passed me," said Lowes. "I thought I would sit behind those guys out front but I wasn’t fast enough because I was struggling with the front.

"I was a bit quicker than the guys behind so it was a bit of a boring race for me. But it was a long race - and hot. I used the Race One experience to try to be consis♛tent and understand how I can improve for Sunday.”