Barcelona WSBK: Van der Mark wins, Bautista crashes out

At the start of the 10-lap sprint race, polesitter Jonathan Rea made a clean start from pole position to lead into Turn 1, with van der Mark slotting his Yamaha into second with a brilliant launch from fourth.

Bautista initially dropped from second to fourth, but quickly dispatched the Kawasaki of Alex Lowes to move up to third.

As the top three pulled away from rest of the field, Bautista took advantage of slipstream to pass both Rea and van der Mark into Turn 1 on lap 3, taking the lead for the first time.

However, the hopes of a first Honda victory with the new Fireblade were crushed almost immediately afterwards as Bautista suffered a highside exiting Turn 4, forcing him immediately to retire from the race.

Just when Bautista was launched off the bike, van der Mark had managed to fire his Yamaha up the inside into Turn 4 to move himself ahead of the Kawasaki of Rea.

Rea managed to stay around three-quarters of a second within van der Mark for the next five laps, but the Dutch rider managed to extend his advantage to over a second on lap 8.

That allowed him to claim his first victory in WSBK since Jerez in 2019, as championship leader Rea finished 2.7s behind in second on the lead Kawasaki.

Ten Kate Yamaha rider Loris Baz pulled off some well-judged moves to finish third and clinch his second podium finish of the 2020 season.

Factory rider Chaz Davies successfully held off the advances of GRT Yamaha rider Garrett Gerloff to finish fourth, the two riders separated by just 0.056s at the chequered flag.

Michael Ruben Rinaldi was classified sixth on the Go Eleven Ducati, beating the second Kawasaki of Lowes.

Ducati’s Scott Redding endured a subdued race en route to eighth, slipping 48 points behind Rea in the championship standings with seven races left to run in 2020.

BMW’s Tom Sykes was classified ninth, while ex-MotoGP rider Jonas Folger charged from last position to round out the top 10.

Leon Haslam retired early on in the race after an incident with GRT's Federico Caricasulo, marking a double DNF for the factory Honda team.

Race results:

Cla	#	Rider	Bike	Gap
1	60	Michael van der Mark	Yamaha
2	1	Jonathan Rea	Kawasaki	2.372
3	76	Loris Baz	Yamaha	2.923
4	7	Chaz Davies	Ducati	3.929
5	31	Garrett Gerloff	Yamaha	3.985
6	21	Michael Ruben Rinaldi	Ducati	6.487
7	22	Alex Lowes	Kawasaki	7.688
8	45	Scott Redding	Ducati	8.573
9	66	Tom Sykes	BMW	10.071
10	94	Jonas Folger	Yamaha	12.709
11	50	Eugene Laverty	BMW	12.713
12	12	Xavi Fores	Kawasaki	13.027
13	87	Lorenzo Zanetti	Ducati	21.781
14	53	Valentin Debise	Kawasaki	21.922
15	20	Sylvain Barrier	Ducati	26.909
16	13	Takumi Takahashi	Honda	29.074
	97	Samuele Cavalieri	Ducati
	19	Alvaro Bautista	Honda
	91	Leon Haslam	Honda
	64	Federico Caricasulo	Yamaha
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