WSBK Supersport Portugal Race 2: Dominique Aegerter obtains his 13th victory in a furious melee

Dominique Aegerter obtains his 13th victory in race 2 and puts an option on his second world title. Super De Rosa with Ducati.

Paul Gozzi / Corsedimoto.com

With a super victory, the thirteenth of the year, Dominique Aegerter got his hands on a double in the Supersport World Championship. At the finish line of the most beautiful race in recent years, the 32-year-old Swiss rider beat the Ducati by a very good margin. Raffaele De Rosa and the Turk's Kawasaki Can Öncüu. With Lorenzo Baldassarri sunk by a long lap penalty and only seventh, this appears to be the turning point of the championship for Aegerter. He now has a 45-point lead over Baldassarri, but there are six battles remaining.

 

 

What a melee!
At the Portimão circuit, the “Next Generation” technical rules established to balance the performance of very different motorcycles, from the four-cylinder 600 to the two-cylinder 955, appear to have reached optimal calibration. The Yamaha monologues that we had witnessed in almost all previous rounds gave way to a real melee. Ten riders crowded onto a few meters of track for almost all of the race's 17 laps. The episode that broke the group (and perhaps the world championship...) with five rounds remaining: Lorenzo Baldassarri hit the Finn's MV F3 800 Nikki Tuuli, who lost control and ended up under the wheels of Stefano Manzi. The winner of race 1 was stuck and could do nothing to avoid the impact. Manzi and Tuuli were caught in the tangle, fortunately without any physical damage. Baldassarri remained on track, seventh, and also had to serve the penalty, which prevented him from catapulting into the lead.

 

 

Thrilling sprint
Final round verdict: Dominique Aegerter sprinted like a fury into the first corner, surprising Federico Caricasulo who had led the peloton for a long time on his fast Ducati. In the most undulating part, Caricasulo himself was overtaken by Raffaele De Rosa, losing the trajectory so much that Can Öncü could also have surprised him. In the final straight sprint, he was five thousandths short of taking at least the third step of the podium. De Rosa took the Ducati to second place, the result of a courageous and perfect overtake. “But now is not the time to party”, declared the Neapolitan, recalling the very serious accident which Victor Steeman was a victim on Saturday.

 

 

Results from WorldSBK Supersport Race 2 in Portimão:

Classification credit: WorldSBK.com

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Paul Gozzi