Álvaro Bautista and Chaz Davies scored two good results today – a third and a fifth place respectively – in Race 1 at the Misano Adriatico circuit in Round 7 of the Superbike World Championship. Difficult conditions, with heavy downpours, caused delays in the starting procedure, initially scheduled for 14h00. In addition, the race was interrupted when the red flags came out after just three laps because the track conditions were impracticable. As a result, the race was shortened to 18 laps and was won by Rea (Kawasaki).
Davies was very effective in the early stages in spite of the difficult conditions. The 32-year-old from Wales, who started from the ninth grid slot, rapidly made up ground until he reached fourth place. Unfortunately, a small problem meant he had to drop a few places but he did eventually finish the race in fifth. After qualifying fifth in this morning’s Superpole, Bautista took a few laps to gain confidence with the difficult conditions, which he had never encountered before in Superbike, but by running a careful second part of the race and capitalizing on the difficulties of other riders, he took home a well-deserved third place.
Tomorrow the ten-lap Superpole Race gets underway at 11.00 CET, with Race 2 following at 14.00.
Álvaro Bautista (Aruba.it Racing – Ducati #19) – 3rd
“Today there were many things new for me, first of all these difficult conditions. As well as doing my first Superbike race in the wet, with the delay in the start and the red flag two times, it was difficult to keep concentration. I made a cautious start to try and understand the conditions of the track; in some parts it was raining too hard while in others the situation was a bit better and when I understood that I could get my feeling and pace. Lap by lap I felt more feedback and went more to the limit so I’m happy for the feeling with this race. It was important to get points and to do it with a podium was a good result.”
Chaz Davies (Aruba.it Racing – Ducati #7) – 5th
“It was the first wet race with the Panigale V4 R so overall it wasn’t such a bad performance. I had a problem in the middle of the race with the electronic shifter, then it cleared itself and was fine again, it was probably water-related. That upset my rhythm a bit because I was more or less in with the fight for the podium. I lost a bit of time trying to manually backshift, but to a limited effect. In the last four laps I got back into the rhythm again but the gap to the others was a bit too much. I was quite happy with the feeling with the bike in those conditions, it’s just a shame we didn’t really get to fight with the right package for the whole race distance.”
