Here’s the confirmation: Alvaro Bautista is the World Superbike Champion! An unblemished performance from the Ducati rider left Toprak Razgatlioglu with no chance of dreaming.
Alvaro Bautista started the race well and took advantage of pole position to stay in first place, but the highlight was Toprak Razgatlioglu, with the Turkish rider recovering many positions and not taking long to climb up to third, and soon afterwards he was in second place after overtaking Jonathan Rea.
In no time at all, the Yamaha rider, who still harbours hopes of becoming champion, was in second place, but he still has to hope for a miracle and finish in front while waiting for Bautista not to score.
Note for the crash from Remy Gardner, who had his bike really broken after a incident with Axel Bassani:
The race continued at a good pace and soon we were back to watching a film that had little or nothing of 2023: Bautista in the lead and Razgatlioglu behind, with both riders distancing themselves from the rest of the pack.
That was the top ten of the race, with eight laps completed:
The gap between Bautista and Razgatlioglu remained in the region of five tenths, while Rea was now closing to within five seconds of the leader. Alex Lowes remained fourth and Andrea Locatelli rounded off the top five.
Michael Van Der Mark then crashed at turn 13, ending his race.
In the meantime, Bautista began to pull away and gain an advantage over Razga, and in the space of three laps he went from 0.525s to 1.479s.
The gap between the leader and his closest pursuer continued to widen over the next few laps and Bautista looked set to renew his title.
Bassani crashed at turn nine and didn’t hide his frustration: in a fight with Michael Ruben Rinaldi, he crashed and was out of the race. A big blow to the fight for the independent drivers’ championship.
A few moments later, Rinaldi received a Long Lap for the incident with his compatriot.
With three laps to go, the dream of renewing the title was getting closer. Bautista had almost 4s on Razgatlioglu and had one hand and four fingers on the other for the title.
As the final lap entered, all the cameras were capturing the team’s four with the message “World Superbike Champion”.
And there it was. Title sealed and Bautista was world champion!