What a battle between Alvaro Bautista and Toprak Razgatlioglu in Portimao in race 2! Lap after lap the rivals exchanged the lead, but in the end the championship leader was stronger and beat his opponent on the finishing straight, as happened so many times today. The spaniard now has one hand on the title, but the decisions are postponed until the Jerez round.
First matchpoint for Bautista in the World Superbike Championship, with the spaniard “only” needing to finish the race seven points ahead of Toprak Razgatlioglu to become champion with one round still to go.
Razgatlioglu got the best start and took first place in the race straight away, ahead of Bautista and Andrea Locatelli, when Xavi Vierge crashed. Jonathan Rea and Scott Redding were also involved in the incident.
Hafizh Syahrin was still the first to drop out of the race, as Vierge remained on track despite falling behind the competition.
On the second lap Michael Rinaldi wanted to leave a good image in Portugal and climbed to third place, behind his teammate and the #54.
The battle between Razgatlioglu and Bautista was lively, with the spaniard overtaking his opponent but the latter soon returning the move and inheriting the lead. Less than two tenths separated the riders. Rinaldi was 1.6s behind.
Bautista briefly retook the lead when he hit the Yamaha rider on the straight, but at the next corner he was back at the front of the race.
With four laps completed only 0.091s divided the #1 from the #54, so it was no wonder that Bautista was back at the front of the race on the following lap.
In the space of two laps the Ducati spaniard gained 0.507s on Razgatlioglu while Rinaldi was 1.997s behind. At this point Bautista had 60 points more than Razgatlioglu in the live championship accounts.
The turk didn’t give up and not only recovered the gap to the spaniard, but overtook him shortly afterwards. It was all over for now.
With ten laps completed, that was the top ten in Portimao:
Remy Gardner dropped out of the race, as did Loris Baz a few laps ago. Razgatlioglu was once again in the lead, proving that this race was going to be hard fought… but Bautista showed the power of the Panigale V4R on the straights and was able to move into the lead afterwards.
It was constant: on every lap the two rivals swapped positions. Rea, recovering, was already 12th with six laps to go. It was Rinaldi who benefited from this, now 1.3s behind when he had been twice that.
At the start of the 16th lap, the leader in Portimao was Bautista, who invariably moved to the front on the finishing straight.
With two laps to go, the duel continued. Rinaldi remained in third with 1.6s, Garrett Gerloff was fourth and Locatelli fifth.