Triple World Superbike champion Jonathan Rea dedicated his latest win to William Dunlop.

Castletown resident Rea extended his lead in the Championship to 92 points after securing victories in both of the weekend’s races at the Misano round in northeast Italy.

It was his third double of the season and his 10th victory of the campaign already as he marches towards a fourth world superbike title.

After his second win of the weekend, the Ulsterman paid tribute to Dunlop, saying: ’I wanted to win for William Dunlop. I just cannot imagine what his family are going through at this time.’

The Isle of Man resident was clearly emotional on the podium and refused to celebrate his latest success, refraining from joining in the mandatory celebratory Champagne spraying.

Rea notched up his ninth win of the season with a start-to-finish victory in Saturday’s opener to clinch his 63rd career success.

He made a perfect start and got clear of his opposition by more than 0.3 seconds on lap one, taking the holeshot and leading his Kawasaki team-mate Tom Sykes for the first few laps before the latter suffered a few problems.

Rea then powered on ahead at a high pace and comfortably won the race ahead of Chaz Davies and Eugene Laverty.

Starting from the third row of the grid in the second race, Rea had to use all his skills and determination to secure his 10th win of the season.

Having to pass several riders, some of them after more than one attempt, Rea seized a late opportunity to take the lead from long-time front-runner Michael van der Mark and eventually won by a narrow 0.334 seconds.

Speaking afterwards, Rea commented: ’That was a super-super hard race. Yesterday I controlled the race. I could lead from the front, make my rhythm and go away. Today I could not make that in the beginning and I spent so much tyre and energy coming through the traffic.

’The bikes are so evenly matched now it is so hard to make a pass and make it stick. It was a hard job to track down Mikey (van der Mark) and when I arrived I was starting to panic a little bit with five laps to go.

’I wanted to be in the lead by that stage and make a gap. I was worried about getting through because he was not making mistakes, but then he ran into the last corner a little bit deep, and I was able to pull alongside and out-brake him in T1. I made a lot of passes in that race and it was really hard work.’