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The Turkish rider caught and then passed his rival on the final lap to send the crowd—and es- pecially the BMW garage—wild. And why not? It was the first win for team partner SMR in a big race, the first win ever at Catalunya for Toprak, the first feature-length win for BMW since Chaz Davies at Nurbur - gring in 2013, and the first full win for the M 1000 RR, full-stop. Bulega was second, and 14th-placed starter Alvaro Bau - tista was third, even after losing two grid places from his 12th- place ride in Superpole due to going too slow on track. Fourth was Iannone and fifth a determined Andrea Locatelli (Pata Prometeon Yamaha). Jonathan Rea (Pata Prometeon Yamaha) burnt out his clutch on the start and retired on lap one. Another disaster for Rea in what is looking like an awful season. In the Sunday morning Super - pole race, Sam Lowes made an- other strong early push, catching holeshot man Iannone for a time. In lap three, Iannone took the lead again, and Alex Lowes moved into second place, one up on Bulega. Toprak got into fourth place and then started to try and close the narrow leading gap. Bulega set a new lap record of 1:40.955 on lap four. A fantastic competition carried on right through the 10 laps, with final lap leader Bautista finally done on the inside into the final corner in a replica of the famous Rossi-Lorenzo move of 2009, with Razgatlioglu taking his sec - ond win of the weekend. Bautista was pushed so wide that he lost even second place to Iannone. Bulega was fourth and not quite on the pace, while Alex Lowes was fifth. Brother Sam dropped back to finish 11th. Rea was 13th and was yet again with - out a single Championship point. That would change in race two, but he still only finished eighth. If the Superpole race was a stunning event all the way, race two could hardly live up to it. The biggest excitement, other than a few gargantuan passes here and there, was the fact that Iannone fell, without injury, from a strong position on lap 13. The final race eventually ended up in a fight between teammates Bautista and Bulega, with the win (his own personal first of the year) going to Bautista. He deserved it. Having taken a lead, he was passed by Bulega, re-passed his tough new oppo - nent, and then showed enough pace to win by 2.041 seconds. He and Bulega also negated the challenge of Razgatlioglu, who this time around did not have the late pace to overcome the best of the V-fours. Raz was seven seconds back. Off the podium in fourth, Michael van der Mark was still grinning at his upturn in fortunes after all his recent injuries. Fellow BMW rider Garrett Gerloff had a flustered time in his "home" race of Catalunya. The Barcelona-based American left scratching his head after carding 12th-, 17th- and 13th- place finishes. "I am not going to lie. I was hoping and expecting a better weekend than it was," Gerloff said. "We just struggled a bit with some things. I feel like I struggled with some riding stuff on my side, and also, I had some issues with some setting stuff on the bike side." In the Championship, Bulega leads Bautista by 12 points, 87-75. Alex Lowes has the same points as Bautista but is ranked third. Razgatlioglu moved up to fourth place, despite that big first round no-score. Whatever happened in race two, however soundly he was beaten, the weekend belonged to Razgatlioglu and BMW. More to Toprak than the manufacturer, although they all deserved their two big moments of glory. After all, nobody had done on a BMW what Toprak had done since long before BMW came back as an official team in WorldSBK. WorldSSP WorldSSP has had several shots in the arm recently. For this year, the main points of interest VOLUME ISSUE MARCH , P49 Alvaro Bautista returned to winning ways in race two.