Jonathan Rea (Kawasaki ZX-10RR) did everything right in the third round of the World Championship in Misano and so far has been the only one on the podium in each of the nine races. At the second race in Misano, this time he was even cheated out of not punishing a track-limit sinner.

WSBK Sunday in Misano: Razgatlioglu wins scandalous race

After the WorldSSP race, we did something that had already been discussed internally beforehand. Because we are fans of the series and racing, like most viewers, we want to see fair races above all. Like the majority of the people in the paddock, we are anything but friends of the newly introduced regulations. First and foremost, we too resist the completely questionable track limits. It is bitter irony when, in a battle for positions and hundredths of seconds, drivers are punished for touching a part of the route marked in green (what a color in this context) with one or both wheels. It will be even more nonsensical if, like a year ago in MotoGP with Fabio Quartararo and on Sunday Steven Odendaal as leader, received a long lap penalty in the last or penultimate lap. With a victory or a podium in front of their eyes, hardly anyone looks at signals or pit boards. In both cases it canceled penalties, just like in Mugelllo recently in MotoGP but often very inconsistently. The following picture clearly shows that the winner of the second WorldSBK race should have been punished in the same way and thousands of spectators saw it on the screens if they looked closely.

This shot was taken by Jonathan Rea’s camera and shows how Toprak Razgatlioglu committed a so-called “Track Limit Violation” in the third lap of the second Misano race, for which he was the winner of the FIM stewards in contrast to the WSSP Steven Odendaal, however, was not punished.

Many disappointments on Saturday
Day one already brought serious disappointments for some drivers and teams. Above all, the two Ducati Hopes and former teammates Davies and Redding, as well as Jonas Folger and his BMW works colleagues. While Chaz had crashed, Redding had to make do with P4 and remained well behind winner Rinaldi. The German missed the points with rank 16 and the other two blue-whites made it into the top ten with P8 and position 10. After Tom Sykes started row two, the fast man from Huddersfield went back one more time in the race. It is now clear and there are no more excuses for the fact that BMW slouched with the latest test start of all works teams. With such half-hearted commitment, however, the people of Munich have no place in the top of the world. The main victims of this are the drivers and, secondly, the fans, who had hoped for an increase after the introduction of the M-1000RR. Instead of fighting for the podium with a Yamaha R1 as before, Michael van der Mark had to be content with 10th place.

Michael Ruben Rinaldi (Aruba.it Ducati) in front of Jonathan Rea (Kawasaki Racing Team), who saved himself with an incredibly strong and quick-witted reaction from a safe crash in Turn 1, after which the Northern Irishman even finished on the podium, for the exact 150th time for Kawasaki.

The WorldSBK Superpole Race – the top five like the day before

For Chaz Davies it only went to the second corner when, like on Saturday this time, he ended his chances in the gravel with a crash right from the start. Again it was Rinaldi who, after initially leading Toprak, had the better end for himself. Jonathan Rea was on the lead for a long time, but for 2 or 5 points more than P3 he didn’t seem to want to risk a fall. Again, like the day before, he kept Scott Reddiing behind him at a safe distance, who then sat in his pits disappointed in fourth place, as on Saturday. Alex Lowes, who crossed the finish line in 5th place like in the first race, looked much happier. Of course, this also applies to the first three, with Toprak as second only talking as if he were in agreement with P2. His face, however, spoke a different language. For this, he was later honored with a gift from the FIM stewards, which unfortunately turned the Misano weekend into a scandal.

Turn 8 called Quercia with the empty hill of the natural grandstand, as in other places around the track, taken shortly before the last race of the scandal weekend in Misano of the WorldSBK.

The “Misano World Circuit Marco Simoncelli”

The results from Sunday and the World Championship intermediate result

We will publish the results that have become insignificant after the Misano scandal and the interim results in the World Cup in a separate report. For us, the consequence of this is that we will forego live blogs in both MotoGP and WorldSBK for the time being. With cheating on individual drivers, the fun stops with us, and at the moment it’s all about the completely arbitrary application of the new regulations. For the time being we limit ourselves to summaries of the sporting events and this, as always, critically and not following the so-called mainstream. We are firmly convinced that skeptical voices are needed, especially nowadays, and whoever carefully looked at the pictures with spectators in the stands may understand what we mean by that. Instead of spreading them all around the track in Misano, visitors are crammed together like cattle in the tightest of spaces in a few grandstand areas. Probably because of the high temperatures, most of them did not even have their masks on or wore them on their chins.

While the majority of the grandstands were empty and the natural grandstands were also closed, this was a typical picture of the madness of the first event with spectators along the route. Exactly two people wore their mask halfway correctly, apparently according to the motto “give the virus a chance”. This of all places in a country hit the hardest by the pandemic.

Unless otherwise stated, this applies to all images (© WorldSBK).