ROUND 12 / OCTOBER 15-17, 2021
CIRCUITO SAN JUAN VILLICUM / SAN JUAN, ARGENTINA
P60
ROAD RACE I FIM SUPERBIKE WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP
three swapped the lead and the
top three places, and the new
force that is Bassani even got
into the moving podium places
on occasion, if not the lead itself.
At the very front Razgatlioglu
led lap one, Rea led lap two, and
then Razgatlioglu led for another
seven laps before Redding as-
serted his superior pace and
moved away to make sure of his
win, by over two seconds at the
flag.
It was not even Razgatlioglu
who chased him home hardest,
it was Rea. He said his team had
made a change that was very left
field from the norm and it worked
for him all the way to second
place, one place better than even
Razgatlioglu and his seemingly
invincible pace in the first two
races. In race two it was Rea, not
Toprak, who had the setup and
determination for second, as he
trimmed back the championship
lead—if only lightly.
Bassani and several other
riders got past Lowes, as the
recently-injured KRT rider found
all that exertion to take a very
gritty fourth place in Saturday's
race had made his hand injury
flare up again. He rode to ninth in
the Superpole race but lost half
of those places in the final two
laps. He withdrew from race two.
The final Villicum race was
all-out war at the front as the big
in again, for a time, until the
Ducati rider started to claw back
Razgatlioglu's lead.
Thanks to a mistake under
braking from Toprak on the final
lap, Redding got past into turn
seven but ran wide, allowing
Razgatlioglu to get inside and up-
right quicker, achieving a better
exit line and drive down the long
back straight.
It was enough for Toprak to
take win number two of the
weekend.
With Rea third, however,
all the potential of Razgatlio-
glu clinching the championship
one round early were dashed,
as no matter what happened,
Razgatlioglu would not have
enough points to go to the final
round at Mandalika in Thailand
far enough ahead to have the
trophy sitting at home already.
Fourth in the Superpole race
was Bassani, his best dry-weath-
er result so far, as his rookie
season goes from strength to
strength.
Redding smashed 'em in race two.
Tito Rabat leads Chaz Davies in
the latter's penultimate career
WorldSBK race weekend.
