MotoMatters.com | Kropotkin Thinks

The day got warmer, up to 21ºC, as the World Superbike grid lined up for twenty three laps. The weekend attendance was 52,743 fans through the gates. Alvaro Bautista dropped his bike on the way to the grid and his team frantically dragged lumps of Leicestershire from his plastics as everyone else relaxed.

Nicolo Bulega led Toprak Razgatlioglu into turn one with Sam Lowes holding third place until Jonathan Rea passed him. Scott Redding gave himself a bit of work as he dropped to seventh place from the start, but he took sixth place from Dominique Aegerter on lap two as Axel Bassani crashed out at turn four.

Lap three and Toprak Razgatlioglu took the lead into the Melbourne Loop and set a fastest lap of 1'25.597, a new lap record. Redding carried on making up for a bad start by passing Sam Lowes at the Melbourne Loop for fourth place on lap six.

Toprak Razgatlioglu, sporting a new seat on his BMW, didn't have as easy a start as yesterday as Nicolo Bulega held on to the leader for a few more laps before Razgatlioglu finally broke free of the Italian's clutches on lap eight, leading by almost two seconds.

Lap ten and Toprak Razgatlioglu had a lead of under three seconds from Nicolo Bulega with Alex Lowes and Scott Redding continuing their battle a second and a half further back.

At half race distance, Andrea Locatelli led the battle for fifth place on lap eleven, over four seconds off Redding and Lowesleading Alvaro Bautista, Danilo Petrucci, Jonathan Rea and five other bikes in a large group. Bautista carved his way through the pack to start lap fifteen under three and a half seconds from Redding. Alex Lowes was a further two seconds up the road, under a second and a half from second-placed Nicolo Bulega. Toprak Razgatlioglu was over four seconds in the lead as two thirds race distance was completed.

Razgatlioglu extended his lead to five seconds over Bulega on lap seventeen of twenty three.

Nicolo Bulega, Alex Lowes, Scott Redding and Alvaro Bautista were in lonely places behind Toprak Razgatlioglu with Danilo Petrucci, Andrea Locatelli and Jonathan Rea fighting over sixth place over a second and a half further back as the laps ticked down, but Bautista was lapping half a second quicker than Redding with four laps left and a gap of under two seconds. Petrucci was lapping at the same pace as Bautista, with Locatelli and Rea matching his pace in their own fight.

The last lap started with Razgatlioglu over seven and a half seconds in the lead, with Bulega two seconds clear of Lowes behind him. Redding was clear from Bautista in fourth place and the last lap was a tense but predictable lap as Razgatliglu won his third race of the weekend decisively, giving BMW their second triple in World Superbike and extending his championship lead.

Nicolo Bulega took a secure second place with Alex Lowes climbing onto the last step of the podium behind him. Scott Redding was the first to miss out on the podium, over a second ahead of Alvaro Bautista with Danilo Petrucci coming in sixth ahead of the Locatelli/Rea fight. The race wasn't the most exciting, but the British crowd was very happy to see the Turkish rider on a German bike take three comfortable wins.

Toprak Razgatlioglu, with seven wins in a row and two hundred and forty one points, leads the championship by forty one points over Nicolo Bulega with Alvaro Bautista fourteen further points back. Alex Lowes took another five points out of Bautista and sits twenty one points off third place with Andrea Locatelli forty nine points behind him.

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