Superbike, Jonathan Rea returns to winning ways
Superbike, race-1
Jonathan Rea (Kawasaki Racing Team WorldSBK) after 252 days and 23 races without a win returns to success in the MOTUL FIM Superbike World Championship by focusing on the intermediates. In Race 1 of the Acerbis Round of the Czech Republic he starts with intermediates and comes back to win: important second place in view of the Championship at the Autodrom Most for Toprak Razgatlioglu (Pata Yamaha Prometeon WorldSBK) while Alvaro Bautista (Aruba.it Racing – Ducati) finishes 12th.
In the first laps among the protagonists we see riders mounting wet tires; this is the case of Axel Bassani (Motocorsa Racing) who starts from the fourth box, immediately takes the lead and at the end of the second lap has a six-second advantage over Remy Gardner (GYTR GRT Yamaha WorldSBK Team). By the end of the fourth lap, the Venetian had more than a ten-second margin over the Australian.
On lap five, however, the Feltre rider began to lose the lead to Jonathan Rea (Kawasaki Racing Team WorldSBK), and at the end of lap six there were just two seconds between the leading two. On the same lap Lorenzo Mauri’s team rider returns to the pits, leaving the lead to Rea: Axel crosses the finish line in seventh position.
Bassani signs several 1’32” – about three seconds better than Rea – while in the lead a great duel between Rea and Toprak Razgatlioglu (Pata Yamaha Prometeon WorldSBK) is staged. The Turk is faster than the Northern Irishman whose pace, however, is enough to keep Toprak behind: Rea returns to the victory he has been missing since Race 1 at Phillip Island in 2022.
Rea finishes ahead of Razgatlioglu and Danilo Petrucci (Barni Spark Racing Team), also on intermediates. The top three finish within eight seconds: for the Northern Irishman it is the 119th WorldSBK victory. Razgatlioglu celebrates his 21st podium finish of the season and 19th in a row by moving even closer to world standings leader Alvaro Bautista (Aruba.it Racing WorldSSP Team): there are now 54 points between the two.
Scott Redding (ROKiT BMW Motorrad WorldSBK Team) at the end of the warm-up lap decides to come back to the pits to switch to intermediates: he starts from the pit lane and finishes fourth ahead of Iker Lecuona (Team HRC) and Andrea Locatelli (Pata Yamaha Prometeon WorldSBK). There is less than a second between fourth and sixth.
Bassani finishes seventh, 23 seconds behind Rea: on the final lap he makes up three positions to the detriment of Loris Baz (Bonovo Action BMW), Alex Lowes (Kawasaki Racing Team WorldSBK) and Dominique Aegerter (Ten Kate Racing Yamaha). Aegerter, eighth, is ahead of Lowes and Baz.
11th place for rookie Remy Gardner (GYTR GRT Yamaha WorldSBK Team), who started from the front row. At the end of the fifth lap he pits to change tires and closes the race ahead of Bautista, who loses 18 seconds in the pit stop and gives up the position to the Australian who re-entered just after him. 13th place for Michael van der Mark (ROKiT BMW Motorrad WorldSBK Team) who returns to the points zone putting Michael Ruben Rinaldi (Aruba.it Racing – Ducati) and Tito Rabat (Kawasaki Puccetti Racing) behind him.
