MotoMatters.com | Kropotkin Thinks

After a brief heavy shower of rain messing with the World Supersport race, the temperature climbed up to 23ºC for the twenty two lap World Superbike race on the harder-than-usual tyres.

Alvaro Bautista took advantage of his front row start, in spite of a poor launch, with Axel Bassani, Jonathan Rea and Toprak Razgatlioglu behind him. Garrett Gerloff crashed out on turn one. Rinaldi climbed up to fourth place past Razgatlioglu as Axel Bassani ran on into turn one as Rea took second place from him. Razgatlioglu took third place back into turn one.

World Supersport's last race of the weekend started at a dry 22ºC with nineteen laps planned. 

After yesterday's blustery rain, a ten lap sprint race at 19ºC with a lot less windwould be most welcome. Ten laps on dry tyres would determine the positions for this afternoon's race, in spite of a brief shower this morning.

World Supersport was supposed to be nineteen laps of a dried-out Most, but after a mistake by Raffael De Rosa, a bunch of riders avoided him and went off track into turn one resulting in Lucas Mahias crashing out and the red flags coming out with gravel being spread over turns one and two. A twelve lap restart was announced, using grid positions from Superpole.

As the fancy Czech trio of In Flagranti bowed their strings at the front of the grid, the rain slapped down on the track. Umbrellas, clear visors, soft settings and wet weather Pirellis were brought out as, just to make conditions even worse, the wind prepared to batter the riders for twenty two laps at 19ºC. Pit intervention time for anyone wanting to change tyres is a minimum of fifty eight seconds.