The big news from Imola this weekend is the ending of the improbable win streak of Alvaro Bautista (Ducati) at the start of the 2019 WSB championship series. Four-time champ Jonathan Rea (Kawasaki) found the Imola track the kryptonite to superman Bautista as Rea proceeded to win both Race 1 and the Superpole sprint race. Race 2 was cancelled earlier today due to heavy rain.
Bautista did manage to finish second in Race 1 with a big gap over 3rd place Toprak Razgatlıoğlu (Kawasaki). In the sprint race, Chaz Davies (Ducati) beat his teammate Bautista to the line, where they finished second and third, respectively, to Rea.
Bautista still enjoys a large points lead in the championship. You will find full results for Race 1 here and the Superpole race here. For additional details and points, visit the official WSB site.
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The other riders are having to unlearn their TWIN riding style, while AB came from riding one of the V4s. Davies was nursing a bad back, and seems to have gotten healthier.
Remember when Ben Spies would learn a new track, win pole and win the race in the same weekend in WSBK?
That is super hard to do.
Give Bautista a little slack. He was on a new track. He’ll bounce back. I don’t think anyone was expecting him to win it all.
It appears that reports of Bautista’s and Ducati’s invincibility may have been greatly exaggerated.
No competitor is invincible.
…..or , with a huge points lead and rumor of possible concessions, do just sand bag one outing ? 😉
Davies wasn’t sandbagging in either race.
If it were the Ducati engine, the other bikes would’ve been up front too.
A few weeks ago we heard that it was all Bautista, not the bike. In motorcycle racing it’s the bike + rider + team combination that makes the difference. Also, did we already forget Alvauro had never been to this race track before?
What happened with the MotoGP wonder ??. In a circuit where the engine has less importance than the previous ones, nobody could catch Rea, and even this, in the short straight of less than 400 mts the Ducati recovered almost two tenths !!. And Davies looks like he finally mastered the V4, going faster than Bautista all the weekend.
Bautista drove a great championship until now, but for me it’s more clear than ever that his success was based greatly on an engine that it’s a rocket.
If it were the engine, all 3 of the other Ducati’s would’ve been up front, too.
Dave
It looks to me like Bautista’s skill allows him to wring out more of the potential that the new Ducati package has, which includes a motor that pretty much stomps everything else on the grid.
While Bautista has adapted to the new bike better than anyone else, I still maintain that if the bike were the difference, the other 3 riders would be doing better relative to the competition.
The other riders are having to unlearn their TWIN riding style, while AB came from riding one of the V4s. Davies was nursing a bad back, and seems to have gotten healthier.
I don’t buy that. A good rider is a good rider and a good bike is a good bike. Davies has won on many different engine types. Riders have switched between classes with much greater differences in power and weight and managed to be competitive.
Huh with all that horsepower and speed advantage of the Ducati, how did Rea manage to pull that off?
That should make some Kwacker fans happy for awhile.
Imola doesn’t have any straights.