WSBK Superbike Catalunya Race 1: Ninth symphony for Álvaro Bautista. Rea and Toprak left behind

Ducati begins to escape again in the Superbike World Championship: Álvaro Bautista dominates race 1 and restores the distance on his two pursuers.

Paul Gozzi / Corsedimoto.com

Ducati starts to escape again in World Superbike: Alvaro Bautista dominated race 1 and reestablished the gap on his two pursuers. Jonathan Rhea saved second place thanks to a comeback after a difficult start, Soil Razgatlioğlu suffered a tire problem and finished fifth. A conclusive success for the Madrid runner: he got off to a great start and set a pace beyond everyone's reach. The Turk tried to hang on and managed to do so for a third of the twenty laps. But it was a mistake, as he put the rear tire in crisis, suffering a sudden drop in performance in the final five laps. So much so that Razgatlioğlu was sucked into the peloton, only finishing fifth.

 

 

There's not one for everyone
If you think about it, Alvaro Bautista on the Ducati most of the time has always run like this since 2019. With the throttle wide open, a stone's throw ahead of everyone, often unattainable. Bautista is a great rider, even in MotoGP he was strong. On some circuits, even there, he has bothered more than one, and Catalonia is one of them. Ducati circled this meeting in red and the first of the three missions took place with apparent ease. In the last 6-7 laps, Bautista was able to create a margin of ten seconds. So much for hand-to-hand combat, here he flies away and leaves. This is his ninth victory this year, the 25th of his career: even the statistics are starting to smile.

 

 

Touched and sunk
The two opponents didn't fight much this time. From Toprak, we said it: He feared the degradation of his tires, and he said that it would be decisive to have grip in the last five laps. While on the contrary, he was running 2-3 seconds (!?) slower than normal. Note that Bautista, Rea and Toprak made the same choice of rear, opting for the SCX evolution, that is to say the new B0800. Presented at Magny-Cours, it quickly became the reference. Jonathan Rhea made life complicated with a bad start and contact in the first corner with Andrea Locatelli. He ended up in eighth position and from there it was difficult to recover. Axel Bassani gave him a hard time in particular, as he was also forced to slow down at the end (eighth place) even though he had chosen the SC0, the hardest tire available. By overtaking, Rea moved up to second place, the maximum he could claim.

 

 

World championship point
Alvaro Bautista climbs to +44 points ahead Toprak Razgatlioğlu, with Jonathan Rea who follows him with 52 points. The eighth round of the Superbike World Championship ends on Sunday with two exciting challenges: The sprint race over the distance of only ten laps, and race 2 with the usual length (20 laps). The weather should improve, so we should see two races on a dry track. There are four rounds remaining: October 7-9 Portimão (Portugal), October 21-23 San Juan (Argentina), November 11-13 Mandalika (Indonesia), November 18-20 Phillip Island (Australia). Each turn is worth 62 points.

 

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Paul Gozzi