Historic victory in WorldSSP for Honda at Most circuit

The FIM World Superbike Championship Sunday race day that just came to an end on the Most circuit in the Czech Republic brought one win each for Toprak Razgatlioğlu (Yamaha) and Álvaro Bautista (Ducati) after the Race 1 victory yesterday for Jonathan Rea (Kawasaki).

The Turkish Yamaha rider dominated the Superpole Race, whereas the Spanish Ducati rider won Race 2. Six-time world champion Rea, after winning Race 1, took home second and third place.

In both races held today, the riders used slicks. For the Superpole Race, the most used rear was the SC0, whereas in Race 2, the most popular was the new SC1 C0567 development solution.

The WorldSSP race was also a thriller, with British rider Tarran Mackenzie staying on track in the rain gambling on slicks and giving Honda a win which they hadn’t achieved in WorldSSP since 2016.

The winner of the 300 class race, delayed due to heavy rainfall which made the track unusable, was the Yamaha’s Indonesian rider Aldi Satya Mahendra.

Heated battles and races influenced by the weather

“First of all, just a brief comment to clarify an issue that generated a bit of confusion for the fans yesterday. The intermediate tyres, like the rain tyres or slicks, are available to all riders and teams in the same quantity. In Race 1, by their own choice, some teams had not asked to have them mounted on rims or they simply had them mounted in the garage and did not take them out to the grid and this is why they did not use them, not because Pirelli had not made them available. The unstable weather once again influenced the races today, particularly the WorldSSP race. The riders who finished on the podium were the ones who decided to stay out on the track with slicks when it began to rain, risking a bit. In WorldSBK Race 2, with the new C0567 rear specification, we recorded three cases of blistering: Rea, Gardner and Razgatlioğlu. For the first two, the blisters were extremely small and had no effect on the performance and race result, whereas in Razgatlioğlu’s case, the tyre had two more evident blisters and the telemetry data shows sudden deflation of the tyre. Even if the Yamaha rider’s race pace was extremely high and none of the other riders’ tyres show any signs of stress or wear, these types of episode clearly must not occur, so we will conduct an in-depth laboratory analysis of the three tyres with blistering to figure out what may have caused it.”

• In the Superpole Race, most of the riders were on the grid with the standard SC1 front and the standard SC0 rear, which were the softest solutions available to them. The only riders who mounted the standard SC2 at the front were Lorenzo Baldassarri (GMT94 Yamaha) and Roberto Tamburini (Yamaha Motoxracing WorldSBK Team), whereas at the rear, the new SC1 C0567 development tyre was chosen by 7 riders: Yamaha riders Remy Gardner, Dominique Aegerter and Lorenzo Baldassarri, Kawasaki riders Tito Rabat and Oliver Konig, as well as Iker Lecuona (Honda) and Phillip Oettl (Ducati). Toprak Razgatlioğlu (Pata Yamaha Prometeon WorldSBK) won the race after starting from pole position. Finishing behind him were Race 1 winner, Jonathan Rea (Kawasaki Racing Team WorldSBK), and current championship leader Álvaro Bautista (Aruba.it Racing – Ducati), managing to snatch the bottom step of the podium from Axel Bassani (Motocorsa Racing), fourth. All 5 of the top finishers used SC0 rear tyres and SC1 front tyres.
• In Race 2, the majority of riders opted for the combination of the standard SC1 front and the new SC1 C0567 development at the rear. Just like in the Superpole Race, at the front, only Lorenzo Baldassarri and Roberto Tamburini mounted the standard SC2, whereas for the rear, Kawasaki factory riders Rea and Lowes went with the SC1 A1126 development solution, already successfully used for the Phillip Island race in 2022 and this year. Toprak Razgatlioğlu and Álvaro Bautista engaged in a fantastic duel on the track, with the Turkish rider managing to fend off the Spaniard’s attacks until crashing out six laps from the end. At that point, Álvaro Bautista had nothing but open road ahead, going on to win the race all by himself at the front. Danilo Petrucci (Barni Spark Racing Team) performed brilliantly, overtaking Jonathan Rea on the final turn to take the second step of the podium, with the Kawasaki rider forced to settle for third.

• On the starting grid for Race 2, the riders confirmed their tyre choices from Race 1. At the rear, practically all of them started with the standard SC0, whereas at the front, almost everyone opted for the standard SC1 in the conventional 120/70 size, with the exception of Adrian Huertas (MTM Kawasaki) and Lucas Mahias (Kawasaki Puccetti Racing) who had already opted for the SC1 in the larger 125/70 size – the same one used by the WorldSBK riders.
• Compared with Race 1, held entirely on a dry track, the fate of Race 2 was highly influenced by the weather. Rain began to fall just before the mid-race point and race direction activated the flag-to-flag procedure, allowing the riders to pit and switch to rain tyres. At that point, many made the switch, whereas a few decided to stay out on slicks, a decision which proved to be the winning one because the rain stopped a few laps later and the track gradually dried off. Winning the race, gambling on the slicks, was British rider Tarran Mackenzie (PETRONAS MIE Racing Honda Team) who finished first ahead of two other riders who elected not to make a pit stop, Marcel Schroetter (MV Agusta Reparto Corse), second, and Bahattin Sofuoglu (MV Agusta Reparto Corse), third.