For a rider who was within a few short laps of taking his first WorldSBK race win in his rookie season, MotoCorsa Ducati’s Axel Bassani could only be described as chilled out about it, and more understandably thrilled to have scored a second place so early in his WorldSBK career.

“A very good result,” he said, still wet with rain in the media scrum. “I feel like Superman now! I tried to arrive first, but Scott had a very good pace on the last two or three laps, and I want to say congratulations to Scott because today was the best rider on the track.”

An even wetter track may have been even better for Bassani, it seems. “Usually I’m faster when there is a lot of rain, but today it was medium situation,” he said. “But I start and I feel very good with the bike. In the first laps, I tried to stay with Jonny but take a little gap, but lap-by-lap Toprak and I, we take him again. A very long race because the last six, five laps I didn’t have grip in the rear. It was so very difficult to stay on the track, but I was really, really focused to arrive at the finish line for me, for my team, for my family. It was a very, very important result.”

He agreed he felt as confident as he looked on TV, and was blissfully unperturbed by racing in such tricky situations against the two biggest beats of WorldSBK right now.

“It was fantastic to stay with Johnny and Toprak,” said Axel. “It was a dream. I think only in the PlayStation I do like that before! We did a lot of overtakes with Toprak in the first part of the race. I had a little bit more pace than him, so I tried to overtake but Toprak is a very difficult man to overtake. So, I said to myself, ‘stay calm. I use Toprak to arrive at Johnny’. So, we did it. It’s a very strange feeling, but I was very happy under the helmet. I’m very happy now.”

Bassani’s lack of rear grip was a relative problem without a solution.
“Yeah. I tried to change the map, but wasn’t good,” said Bassani. “Michael [Ruben Rinaldi] started to take me, but I tried to stay focused, calm. We did it. Second place is fantastic.”

Bassani underlined that the race was just a race for him, who he was racing against didn’t matter. “It’s like a normal rider for me. Jonny, Toprak, Scott are very, very fast riders, but when you are with them on the track, it’s all the same. Don’t start to think, ‘oh, it’s Scott or it’s Toprak’. Just finish the race.”
He did think his runner-up spot the highlight of his entire career so far, “Yeah, the best. Second in a World Superbike Championship race. The best day ever. Yeah. At the moment. I hope to arrive first!”