saki Thailand wildcard Thitipong
Warokorn clashed with another
rider and fell. Leon Camier could
not avoid him on his works Honda,
and the Thai rider needed medical
attention. A red flag was shown
and the race result was called af-
ter just six laps. Bautista won that
one, from Rea and Lowes again.
Warokorn suffered fractures
to his fourth and fifth thoracic
vertebrae but luckily suffered no
damage to his spinal cord.
Michael van der Mark (Yamaha),
Leon Haslam (Kawasaki) and Mar-
co Melandri (Yamaha) completed
the top six in the sprint race.
The final race of the new look
WorldSBK weekend was a replay
of the first, but with less clashing
and banging for the leading two.
Bautista led across the stripe
each of the 20 laps, and finally
took home a 10-second advantage.
"It has been an unbelievable
weekend for me because we
dominated all the practices and
all the races, in a track that of the
last eight races, seven were won
by Kawasaki," said Bautista. "It is
like we came to Kawasaki's terri-
tory. For sure we have to improve
in some areas of the bike, but I
am quite happy because we saw
the bike worked well in Australia
and this is a completely different
type of track."
Rea, again, was helpless to
see Bautista flee away from him
and his relative corner exit pau-
city, and, once again, he had to
settle for second. This is now six
runner-up trophies in a row for a
man who used to win for fun until
very recently.
"The best we could hope for to-
day was a brace of second places
and we managed to achieve that,
albeit with a lot of pressure from
Alex in the final race," said Rea,
with realism in every word.
Lowes was a potential blot in
Rea's map showing the way to
another safe second place, but
Lowes slowed a little after push-
ing so hard to keep up. Three
third places for him in Buriram,
easily the best of the Yamaha
riders this weekend, when it
counted at least.
And as was evident from
overlaying the race results on top
of each other, all three Chang
races, 20-laps, six-laps and 20-
laps again, delivered exactly the
same top seven as each other:
Bautista, Rea, Lowes, Van der
mark, Haslam, Melandri and San-
dro Cortese (Yamaha).
Triple fifth-place man Haslam
kept a trapped nerve in his back
secret until the end of the final
race, but needed pain killing
injections even to ride.
The top overall independent
effort, if Marco Melandri and his
basically official Yamaha can ever
be considered such a combina-
tion, came from GRT Yamaha
again. He finished sixth three
times over the weekend.
In the overall championship,
six-pack Bautista has a maximum
possible 124 points. Rea has 98,
Lowes 69, Van der Mark 61, Me-
landri 54 and Haslam 51.
VOL. 56 ISSUE 11 MARCH 19, 2019 P53
Bautista is now six from six,
undefeated so far in 2019 in what
is already a record-breaking year
for the rookie.
