Bautista Bangs On
Once again Alvaro Bautista
(Ducati) was untouchable in
each points-scoring adventure at
the Assen WorldSBK round, April
21-23, even the final one when
both Toprak Razgatlioglu and
Jonathan Rea tried to beat him
up a bit (metaphorically speak
-
ing) in the early laps.
In each race, no matter the
occasional chaos that was going
on around him, or, rather, behind
him, Bautista overcame his pe-
nalized start to race one to win
them all at Assen. He's had eight
wins from nine races in 2023 and
shows little sign of stopping.
And his final race-two win
made it 400 WorldSBK victories
for Ducati.
On track, the competition was
as fierce as ever in a slightly
weird comeback weekend.
Bautista took the top spot on the
Superpole timesheet, just 0.027
seconds ahead of Rea (Kawa
-
saki). It would be Rea, however,
who started from pole position
in race one in the end, as both
Bautista and the tailing Axel
Bassani (Ducati) were pinged for
riding slowly on the racing line,
adjudged to have impeded the
riders coming to them, BMW's
Garrett Gerloff and Loris Baz.
Bautista thought the punish
-
ment was unfair, but he started
on row two anyway.
He regained his pole position
for the Superpole race and will
remain in the record books as
the Superpole winner from As
-
sen in 2023.
In the first race, Rea took off
with the clear plan of keeping
Bautista behind him for as long
as possible. That plan lasted a
few laps, as Bautista came past
with relative ease.
Rea tried all he could to stay
in the slipstream, but Bautista
WIND
IN THE
P44
Alvaro Bautista leads
the field in race two.
That's as close as
anyone got to him all
weekend long.
PHOTOS:
GOLD & GOOSE
