Review of the WorldSBK double race on Sunday

Start to the first race of the season on Saturday with the two Kawasaki riders Rea and Lowes, who immediately took the lead and in the end, after an outstanding performance, clinched the first double victory for the premiere for the new ZX-10RR Ninja.

Review of the WorldSBK double race on Sunday

After his sensational victory and the hundredth anniversary, Jonathan Rea was of course also the most-named favourite for the Superpole Race. However, the conditions had completely changed, and it had become damp in Motorland Aragon. The question arose as to which tires the drivers wanted to try on in order to best survive the 10 laps in the sprint race. On Saturday, many pilots were on different mixes in the dry and in the end, three different configurations were within just 0.65 seconds. Probably the correct procedure was exactly what Garrett Gerloff was supposed to put on record after the race and probably Kawasaki did before the race. The best thing was clearly to ask those who had just driven before. The WSSP 300 had been on the track shortly before and the drivers were able to confirm on request that the ideal line was as good as dry.

Scott Redding (Aruba.it Ducati) ahead of Garrett Gerloff (GRT Yamaha) and Alvaro Bautista (HRC Honda) – in the first race on Saturday the Englishman surprisingly missed the podium and was only fourth.
The starting position before Sunday with the first two races of WSBK and WorldSSP 600. That no Ducati would be on the podium had surprised all observers, but at least Redding was fourth ahead of Davies and Sykes had a first top ten result for BMW with the new M-1000RR.

The Superpole Race – another demonstration by Jonathan Rea
When the lights went out, it was again the reigning world champion and already 100-time WSBK winner who should soon shape the event. Initially Scott Redding struggled as best he could and crossed the finish line after lap 1 as the first in front of Rea, Lowes, Sykes, Haslam, Bautista and Davies. But in the curvy part it happened to the Ducati driver a little later and the world championship leader immediately drove away from the vice world champion of the previous year. Alex Lowes also grabbed his compatriot shortly afterwards and from then on, the two Kawasaki team-mates were back on short for the second one-two of the weekend. The Ducati hope had apparently gambled away in the tire selection, and he then fell back to 8th place. For the second time after Saturday, there was a second podium for Yamaha behind the two Kawasaki’s with Garrett Gerloff.

Garrett Gerloff (GRT Yamaha) during the podium interview after the Superpole Race. After finishing 9th on Saturday, the US boy was this time “best of the rest” behind the Kawasaki duo and was 3rd on the podium for the first time this season.

The best behind the podium
A sensationally strong Michael van der Mark compensated behind Chaz Davies with his first top five result on the BMW M-1000RR for an 11th place the day before. The joy in the works team of the blue and white was somewhat clouded by the failure with technical problems by Tom Sykes after 7 of 10 laps. The Englishman was still the best BMW driver with P6 on Saturday when Jonas Folger and Eugene Laverty missed the points. The Northern Irishman was the first victim of failure of the German manufacturer. For the fact that it was damp on Sunday morning, Toprak should have been reasonably satisfied in sixth place. After his accident through no fault of his own as a result of a technical malfunction the day before, Alvaro Bautista also finished in the points for the first time in 7th place, as did Redding and Nozane as the last of the top nine. All the others could only be happy about their placement, if they even saw the chequered flag. Mahias was the only accident victim on the first lap at Turn 9.

Chaz Davies ahead of Scott Redding (both Ducati) and Garrett Gerloff – the Welshman was fourth-best Ducati rider after finishing 5th in the Superpole Race on Saturday, but in the afternoon he was anything but as desired.

The dramatic 2nd race with the successful tire poker from Redding

Basically, race two on Sunday is the third race, but it doesn’t matter. A tire poker this time should undoubtedly bring the outcome of the second run. As one of only two drivers, it was Scott Redding who chose the right strategy this time after he and his team had failed in the morning. After Rea was initially in the lead, Garrett Gerloff almost brought him down when he crashed into turn 14 while attacking the leader with a much too optimistic attempt. How the Northern Irishman was able to save himself bordered on a miracle. He then went on to P4 and the Texan was able to get up again and continue the race, but received a long lap penalty for his somewhat headless action. He apologized, as we saw afterwards in the parc fermé, immediately to the Northern Irishman for this and the latter accepted and was in the end just happy himself not to have fallen because of it.

When the audience on the monitor stopped breathing – Garrett Gerloff with his GRT Yamaha slides away in Turn 14 and Johnny Rea has to go straight on, even accelerating towards the gravel bed, as he was later to say on record, in order not to clear the Texan’s bike to become. After this miraculous rescue, the Kawasaki rider still made it to second place.

The field widened early
From lap 6 onwards there was only one leader in Scott Redding on his slick rear tire after he had taken the lead past Toprak. Behind it, however, P2 was wildly down to earth for a long time. Sometimes Johnny Rea was only in 5th position and for a long time it looked like he would miss the podium for the first time after 19 podium places in Aragon. Initially, it was BMW newcomer van der Mark who led the chasing group and from behind the quartet with him, Rea, Lowes and Toprak as well as Tom Sykes on the second works BMW got closer and closer. In the last third of the race, from a certain point onwards, the world championship leader apparently no longer wanted to fight for positions and Rea took a clear lead in order to secure a second place. While Razgatlioglu fell back, it was now Sykes and “Magic Michael” who tried to overtake Alex Lowes partly left and right. But he followed suit with his team-mate a few laps before the end, and he pulled away and took third place in front of the two.

Just before the warm-up lap for the second and last race of the day of WorldSBK – the few privileged onlookers on the left in the picture above the pits. For more details on the events of the three days in Aragon, see our respective live blog from Friday to Sunday.

The winners of the second race on Sunday
Redding’s mental performance was definitely also very strong when he initially had to try to find out what it could take with his slick rear tire. If it had started to rain, he would have been the loser of the day, with only 2 points from the SP race that morning. But the Englishman kept his nerve and drove confidently to the front and a sure victory from the first third of the race. Above all, Rea and Lowes, who after their third double podium in this order lead the World Championships after the start in Aragon, are of course the big winners as the best of the weekend. Tom Sykes and Michael van der Mark were among the defeated in the battle for the podium with places 4 and 5, but this result will definitely give the BMW works team a boost before they move on to Estoril. With the first top ten result of the season, Jonas Folger, together with Lucas Mahias and Andrea Locatelli, is one of the drivers who can be very satisfied with the result of race 2. Toprak, on the other hand, is not entirely happy after his first podium in the first race after two sixth places. But still, with 30 points, he was better than ever in Motorland and with Estoril there is now a course that he has very fond memories of last year.

Alex Lowes (Kawasaki ZX-10RR) ahead of Redding, Razgatlioglu and Davies – the team-mate of the reigning world champion convinced across the board and made it onto the podium three times this weekend. Now he has to do better in Estoril than last year, when he crashed several times.

The clear losers in the second race
First and foremost, the fallen Chaz Davies, Leon Haslam and Tito Rabat should be mentioned. The former drove on afterwards, but like Rinaldi as his successor in the Ducati factory team, laps behind did not create any more championship points. After a crash through no fault of his own in the 1st race and P7 in the Superpole Race, Alvaro Bautista could not be satisfied with 11th place either. Kohta Nozane, who crossed the finish line behind him, scored a point in the SP-Race with 9th place in the morning, which is why 12th place in the second race was rather a slight disappointment for the Japanese rookie. Because Eugene Laverty had only driven the BMW M-1000RR for the second time, you couldn’t expect much more from him than places 16 and 17 on Sunday. Still, it hurts to see a 13-time WSBK run winner so behind. Below are the results of the Superpole sprint race and of the second run on Sunday afternoon.

The situation in the world championship after the first round

Most of the self-proclaimed experts who had been declared as such would hardly have expected Alex Lowes to finish second in the World Cup. Perhaps the world championship leader is no surprise, even if Aragon has been anything but his favourite track so far. Before we go to Estoril, we see a picture, hardly expected even by real experts, with two BMW drivers in the top ten in the intermediate ranking and none of them Honda. On the supposed Ducati track, there was only one red person on the podium, which is the unbelievable conclusion after the season opener. In the table below we have hidden rounds 5 to 12 for the time being. The Superpole race and also the second run started as rain races, for this reason the columns are highlighted in blue.

Motorland Aragon route map

WorldSBK has been racing in Aragon since 2011 and the first win was won by Marco Melandri on a Yamaha, while Aprilia ace Max Biaggi won the second run. The following year, the two Italians won again, but in reverse order and Melandri on a BMW. In the following two years it was first Davies and then Sykes on Kawasaki, which each took a double victory.

The WorldSBK calendar – a rather questionable construct

With Most and Navarra, two new routes have already been added since the first version in November 2020 and the changed dates for other events such as Estoril, which was originally planned for the beginning of May, and Assen now in July instead of the season opener in April are in bold. The bottom two dates are very questionable and are therefore listed in italics. Due to the pandemic and, in the second case, the currently unclear completion, a deletion is to be expected.

>>For more details, see our respective live blogs for the individual days.

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