The second race of the
weekend, a 10-lap sprint, was as
intense as any of the three, and
this time won by the returning
five-time number-one plate holder
Rea. He was highly motivated—by
professional reasons after his
race-one crash and personal
ones, having just had news that
his maternal grandmother had
passed away back home in
Northern Ireland. He dedicated
what was a fully committed win
(passing Razgatlioglu inside at
Turn 11 and holding him 0.067
seconds at bay across the line) to
his family.
"I got a good start in the Su-
perpole race and put my head
had led on lap 20 of 22.
Haslam was fifth, and his
teammate Alvaro Bautista (HRC
Honda) was a seemingly impossi-
ble sixth after some terrible times
in testing and qualifying.
Top Independent rider Loris
Baz (Ten Kate Racing Yamaha)
was seventh and Chaz Davies
(Aruba.it Racing – Ducati) eighth,
from 16th on the grid.
Eugene Laverty (BMW Motor-
rad WorldSBK Team) was only
11th and would miss the races on
Sunday, like American debutant
Garrett Gerloff (GRT Yamaha),
after separate falls on Sunday
morning that gave them both
concussions.
Redding, but it is all relative as
Redding passed Lowes again on
the last lap, and the new green
rider, Lowes, had to fight hard
to get back into the slipstream
of Razgatlioglu, who was mak-
ing good his escape. The tall
Turk suddenly hit traction issues
of his own, and his 0.3-second
advantage finally became one of
the closest-ever winning mar-
gins—0.007 of a second—over
Lowes.
Redding, enjoying the han-
dlebar-to-elbow action, was only
0.041 seconds behind in third,
but VDM's spinning rear issue
held him back in fourth, only
0.137 seconds from the win. He
ROAD RACING
FIM SUPERBIKE WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP
ROUND 1 / FEBRUARY 27-29, 2020
PHILLIP ISL AND / PHILLIP ISL AND, AUSTRALIA
P72
Toprak Razgatlioglu's
(54) season-opener
with Yamaha couldn't
have gone better after
the Turk took the race-
one win, the third of
his career.
