Race report
World Superbike Aragon
Aragon WSBK: Bautista scores back-to-back wins for Ducati
Ducati returnee Alvaro Bautista romped to a second consecutive World Superbike victory of the weekend at Aragon, beating the Kawasaki of six-time champion Jonathan Rea.
Rachit Thukral
Edited: Apr 10, 2022, 6:07 PM
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Having ended a two-year victory drought in only his second race back at Ducati earlier on Sunday, Bautista replicated the same result in the final race of the season opener after emerging on top in an early duel with Rea.
The Spanish rider didn’t make the best of the starts from pole position, allowing Rea through into the lead at Turn 1 and Toprak Razgatlioglu up to second place at Turn 4.
However, having quickly repassed the Yamaha, Bautista retook the initiative at Turn 16 with a brave dive up the inside of Rea into the long left-hander.
Rea and Bautista continued to fight for position for the first part of the race, with the lead changing hands multiple times over the course of each lap.
Their battle was effectively decided on lap 5 when, having slipped again behind Bautista, Rea ran wide over Turn 1 while defending from Michael Ruben Rinaldi and dropped to fourth behind Razgatlioglu’s Yamaha.
Rea did repass Razgatloglu quickly but it wasn’t until lap 11 that he could complete a move on Rinaldi, by which time Bautista had built a 1.5s buffer from himself up front.
And having yet more pace to unleash on his Ducati, Bautista cruised to the finish line, taking the chequered with a victory margin of 4.4s from Rea as the Ulsterman was forced to settle for the second spot yet again after winning Saturday’s opening contest.
Behind, Rinaldi couldn’t keep up with the pace of the leading duo as the race wore on, dropping behind reigning champion Razgatlioglu with just three laps to run and missing out on a podium finish for the second race running.
Rea’s teammate Alex Lowes bagged a healthy tally of points for Kawasaki after finishing fifth, with Axel Bassani again finishing as the top independent rider on the Motocorsa Ducati in sixth.
Bonovo MGM rider Loris Baz rose from 13th on the grid to seventh at the flag on what was otherwise a woeful race for BMW, after passing the two factory Hondas by lap 7 of 18.
Xaxi Vierge and Iker Lecuona were classified eighth and 10th respectively aboard the two HRC-entered CBR1000RRs, separated by the GRT Yamaha of Garrett Gerloff.
Ilya Mikhalchik bagged a solitary point in 15th after a crash in the Superpole race forced him to start from the back of the pack, while Scott Redding’s nightmare first weekend with BMW continued as he was forced to retire from the race with technical problems.
Kohta Nozane was the only other retiree from the race, the Japanese rider suffering a spectacular crash just a few laps from the finish.
Aragon WSBK - Race 2 results:
Cla # Rider Bike Gap 1 19 Alvaro Bautista
Ducati 2 65 Jonathan Rea
Kawasaki 4.393 3 1 Toprak Razgatlioglu
Yamaha 6.223 4 21 Michael Ruben Rinaldi
Ducati 8.817 5 22 Alex Lowes
Kawasaki 12.247 6 47 Axel Bassani
Ducati 15.775 7 76 Loris Baz
BMW 23.925 8 97 Xavi Vierge
Honda 24.790 9 31 Garrett Gerloff
Yamaha 25.406 10 7 Iker Lecuona
Honda 25.570 11 44 Lucas Mahias
Kawasaki 27.641 12 50 Eugene Laverty
BMW 28.867 13 5 Philipp Oettl
Ducati 29.325 14 2 Roberto Tamburini
Yamaha 29.555 15 37 Illia Mykhalchyk
BMW 31.843 16 29 Luca Bernardi
Ducati 43.246 17 16 Gabriele Ruiu
BMW 45.734 18 23 Christophe Ponsson
Yamaha 46.349 19 55 Andrea Locatelli
Yamaha 55.354 20 35 Hafizh Syahrin
Honda 59.398 21 36 Leandro Mercado
Honda 1'01.009 22 52 Oliver Konig
Kawasaki 1'07.061 23 84 Loris Cresson
Kawasaki 1'18.230 3 Kohta Nozane
Yamaha 45 Scott Redding
BMW View full results
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