MotoMatters.com | Kropotkin Thinks

World Superbike's opening race of the weekend was blessed with warm, if not actually hot, weather, climbing to 22ºC during the race. The race was twenty three uninterrupted laps of Donington, with a threat of rain coming to nothing.

The race started with Toprak Razgatlioglu taking the lead, with Scott Redding slipping in to second place into turn one, ahead of Nicolo Bulega who lost third place to Andrea Locatelli into the Craner Curves. Bulega took third place back from Locatelli on lap two as Razgatlioglu extended his lead over the next few laps, setting the fastest lap, a lap record of 1'25.786, on lap three.

Alex Lowes took fourth place from Locatelli on lap five as Bulega took second place from Redding, while Razgatlioglu stretched his lead even further.

Ten laps down, Razgatlioglu led Nicolo Bulega by over five seconds with Scott Redding and Alex Lowes nipping at his heels. Andrea Locatelli was a second and a half further back with Alvaro Bautista closing in on him. On lap thirteen, Bautista closed in on Locatelli and looked for a way around him, finally making a pass into the Fogarty Esses in the last sector.

With Razgatlioglu almost eight seconds clear of the fight for second place, Alex Lowes lifted Bulega's Ducati up into the Melbourne Loop, the right-handed penultimate hairpin, holding second place to start lap fifteen in second place, and extending the gap throughout the lap as Redding and Bautista closed in on Bulega, Bautista having caught the fight for second place.

At two thirds race distance, Razgatlioglu led by an almost unthinkable nine seconds while lapping a quarter of a second quicker than Lowes in second place. Bulega, over a second behind Lowes, fended off Redding and Bautista, and on lap eighteen, Redding tried to make a pass into the Fogarty Esses but had to use the emergency run-off to avoid contact and slotted in behind Bautista, ending his move in fifth place.

On lap twenty of twenty three, Scott Redding pulled off the track with a technical issue at turn eleven, the Melbourne Loop while Toprak Razgatlioglu's lead extended to ten seconds over Alex Lowes. Razgatlioglu was the only rider running 1'26s almost every lap, and generously so, while the rest of the field struggled to get even into the low 1'27s.

Bautista and Bulega had an incident, with Bulega coming out the worst, but both riders carried on, with Bautista a second ahead, and no further action was taken.

Toprak Razgatlioglu showboated across the finish line, swimming on his bike and winning by over eleven seconds from Alex Lowes. Alvaro Bautista rounded out the podium with Nicolo Bulega missing out with Jonathan Rea in fifth.

On his victory lap, Razgatlioglu was pulled over by two "policemen" who issued a speeding ticket to him. These new antics should be FIM-concession proof, keeping Razgatlioglu's paycheque un-fined.

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