MotoMatters.com | Kropotkin Thinks

The last race of the weekend was 22ºC and the attendance was around 49,500. There would once again be a pit stop for fresh tyres, with an eleven lap limit in play.

The first World Superbike sprint race seems like the third after a race split by a pit stop gave us two sprints yesterday. The weather is 21ºC and the track is cooler than yesterday. A headwind into turn one replaces yesterday's tailwind. Perfect conditions make beating Bulega tricky, but everyone has ten laps to try. The top nine grid positions for the last race of the weekend are determined by the results of this race.

The opening World Superbike race would be two ten-lap sprint races glued together with a pit stop as the track is too abrasive for the Pirelli tyres. Pit intervention time, with a maximum of eleven laps allowed on the tyres, is sixty three seconds, with the penalty being five times the time you gained. The weather was a warm 35ºC and a hot track.

The first World Superbike Superpole session of the year missed Jonathan Rea, being ruled out after a crash in testing last week. Nicolo Bulega, pole position and winner here last year on his first ever Superbike race, has topped all four days of testing and all three practice sessions and was favourite for pole position.

Nicolo Bulega tops the final practice session, but Toprak Razgatlioglu finds some form to get within a quarter of a second of the Ducati rider. Three more Ducatis round out the top five.

Results:

After topping all the tests here, Bulega adds both Friday sessions to his belt, ending the day over four tenths ahead of the rest of the field, Andrea Iannone was second quickest ahead of Toprak Razgatlioglu, but Razgatlioglu's second session was not as quick as those of Alvaro Bautista and Danilo Petrucci who ended the day third and fourth quickest overall.

Results:

Nicolo Bulega led Andrea Iannone, Alvaro Bautista and Danilo Petrucci in an all-Ducati top four, Bulega over a third of a second quicker than Iannone. Dominique Aegerter and Toprak Razgatlioglu, resplendent with the number one plate on his BMW, rounded out the top six with Alex Lowes almost a second off Bulega's best time on the new Kawasaki-powered Bimota.

With the races split in half to save the tyres, riders focussed on short ten lap runs instead of the usual twenty-lap shakedowns. 

Results:

Nicolo Bulega leaves preseason testing for the WorldSBK class very much in control. The Aruba.it Ducati rider topped both days of testing at Phillip Island with a comfortable lead over the competition, lapping consistently in the 1'29s, promising much for the race.

It has been a tough start to the WorldSBK season for both Toprak Razgatlioglu and Jonathan Rea. Razgatlioglu broke a finger in a training crash and missed the first test at Jerez, then started off the first session at Phillip Island with a highside, forcing him to miss the morning session.  He returned in the afternoon and ended up third fastest