Ducati’s Scott Redding grabbed the holeshot, the fastest lap and the victory in Sunday morning’s WorldSBK Superpole sprint race at the Navarra Circuit in northern Spain.
Redding fired off the line to defeat the pole-man, KRT’s Jonathan Rea, once again with yesterday’s top-three running at the front as the first lap unfolded.
The three-rider-fight continued throughout the opening laps with Rea and Redding battling for the lead before Toprak Razgatlioglu briefly took charge down the back straight. Three corners later and the championship leader was back in front, his Kawasaki teammate Alex Lowes setting a new circuit record from fifth as he battled his own physicality as well as the 10-lap morning contest.
It was all change again as lap three began, Redding pushing hard, and taking the lap record from his countryman in the process with a 1’37.065, but failing to drop the Kawasaki. The Pata Yamaha, however, looked to be struggling with the pace as he faded to over a second off the duo ahead.
The race ramped up with two laps to go, Rea returning to the wheels of the Ducati as he hunted him down for the final four kms with Redding consolidating the win by six-tenths across the line from the obviously frustrated northern Irishman.
Razgatlioglu was third, just over three-seconds back despite his much better start to this race than Saturday’s, with teammate Andrea Locatelli fourth, after passing Lowes at a key time and holding the advantage to the end.
Tom Sykes (BMW Motorrad WorldSBK Team) was one place behind Lowes, making the Superpole top-six a replica of race one, although the action itself up front was much more frantic today.
Chaz Davies (Team GoEleven Ducati) was seventh, Michael van der Mark (BMW Motorrad WorldSBK Team) eighth, Garrett Gerloff (GRT Yamaha) ninth and Alvaro Bautista (HRC Honda) finished the race today, in tenth.
A full-distance race two is up next for the WorldSBK runners.
