VOLUME 56 ISSUE 28 JULY 16, 2019 P55
BY GORDON RITCHIE
PHOTOGRAPHY BY GOLD & GOOSE
I
f Jonathan Rea (Kawasaki Racing Team) wins
the championship this year, the feat will put
some of the previous comebacks in WorldSBK
history way back into the shadows—maybe even
the classic Colin Edwards vs. Troy Bayliss battle
in 2001 will have to come down a notch or two.
Edwards inexorably won, won and won again
on his way to the championship title in the final
rounds, but one crash at Assen from Bayliss was
his only real foul-up when the pressure was on.
So far in the last few races of 2019, Alvaro
Bautista (Aruba.it Racing Ducati) has had five real
slip-ups, usually of his (or arguably his machine's)
own making, and now one injury-related retire-
ment.
He is 81 points behind Rea going into the sum-
mer break, which seemed impossible even two
rounds ago.
Rea just rode the Laguna wave of a usually
good bike setup to the Superpole win, a new lap
record in the Superpole race, two race wins and a
final second place in race two. He has 80—count
them—WorldSBK race wins to his credit now.
But bizarrely the story was still all Bautista and
his three zeros in three Laguna races.
His fall in race one was particularly weird, as it
was early in a race that the top three were evenly
matched in, yet he pushed hard enough enter-
ing turn five behind Chaz Davies (Aruba.it Rac-
ing Ducati) to fall at speed and present another
golden opportunity to Rea.
And then he crashed again in the short Tissot-
Superpole race on Sunday morning, after con-
tact with Toprak Razgatlioglu only two turns in.
An early injury-related retirement from the final
race of the weekend capped off a completely
pointless weekend for the one-time clear leader.
It was an astounding turn of events, in all pos-
sible ways.
The Superpole competition indicated there
would be a big three for Saturday—Rea, Davies
Bautista—and that is how race one started.
Laguna Seca with
81-point championship
luck crushed Alvaro
WorldSBK dream
Hammer Blow
