ANDhe Spanish rider lvaro Bautista (Aruba.it Racing Ducati) won this Saturday in the first race of the round that will take place this weekend in Donington (England), the sixth round of the Superbike World Championship of which the Spaniard is the leader.
Bautista, current champion, beat Toprak Razgatlioglu of Turkey and Jonathan Rea of Northern Ireland to add his eleventh consecutive championship victory. The Spaniard also breaks the drought for Ducati, who had not won on the British track for 11 years (Carlos Checa, 2011).
Razgatlioglu began by beating Bautista and Rea to take the lead in the race. Jonathan Rea, who would become the first driver in history to climb to the podium 250 times in the competition, returned the hack to the Turk who stood up and took the lead again on the sixth lap.
Bautista, at the controls of his Ducati Panigale V4R, changed the pace in the last third of the race and left rivals along the way. Rea gave up first and the British Alex Lowes later, who also ended up giving in to Razgatlioglu. The driver from Talavera de la Reina scored his fifteenth victory so far this season.
Xavi Vierge (Team HRC) was the second best ranked Spaniard, finishing eleventh. Isaac Viales (TPR Team Pedercini) and Tito Rabat (Kawasaki Puccetti) were fifteenth and sixteenth respectively. Iker Lecuona (Team HRC) crashed on the penultimate lap.
