A brave tyre choice by the Finland rider leads to a well deserved victory.

The first World Supersport race of the weekend was rescheduled from Saturday afternoon to Sunday morning due to deteriorating weather conditions on Saturday and it was well worth the wait.

The home crowd’s short delight at seeing one of their own make the hole-shot soon turned to despair as Lucas Mahias led the field off the start before crashing out of the race at the very first corner, this left fellow Frenchman Valentin Debise in the lead of the race, however Debise’s bold strategy of starting the race on intermediate tyres saw him drop back from the lead to eventually finish 10th.

Niki Tuuli aboard his EAB Racing Team Ducati claimed his first victory since Indonesia in 2022, as the Flying Finn braved the weather on slick tyres on a damp track to come home three seconds clear of Italian Federico Caricasulo. The second place finish is Caricasulo’s first trip to the rostrum this season and the Italian has now scored podiums for four different manufacturers ( Honda, Yamaha, Ducati and now MV Augusta) and extended his personal record of scoring podiums in every season since joining the class in 2016. Glenn Van Straalen secured his second podium of the season by beating championship leader and Moto2 bound Adrian Huertas by 0.142 seconds.

Puccetti racing’s Can Oncu had his best result of the season, taking a fine fifth place and fastest lap of the race. Championship contenders Yari Montella and Stefano Manzi both lost ground to Huertas in their title ambitions, Montella recovered to finish sixth after an attempted overtake on the Huertas resulted in contact and the Italian received a long-lap penalty ending his hopes of a podium. Fellow Italian Manzi was running in 3rd place with 10 laps remaining, well placed for victory with only Debise and fellow intermediate runner Luke Power (both would fade later in the race running on intermediate tyres on a drying track) infront of him. Manzi crashed while trying to overtake Power at turn 15. Australian, Power would later himself drop back out of the top 6 before crashing with eight laps remaining.

Splitting Montella in 6th and Debise in 10th, were strong rides from; Tom Edwards, Jorge Navarro and British star Tom Booth-Amos. Booth-Amos fellow Brit John McPhee who has excelled in similar conditions previously, struggled in the conditions and could only claim 19th place and will be hoping for more in this afternoon’s second race.

For the eleventh time this season, Oli Bayliss finished in the points continuing his consistency in 11th place, one place in front of former Grand Prix rider Lorenzo Dalla Porta. 2022 World Supersport300 Champion Alvaro Diaz equalled his best Supersport result in 13th place with Anupab Sarmoon and Khairul Idham Bin Pawi completing the point scorers.

Featured Image: WorldSBK.com