Nicolo Bulega takes his second victory of round one, Alvaro Bautista and Toprak Razgatlioglu’s race didn’t go to plan.

Nicolo Bulega had much more competition than in his run-away Race one victory, however still claimed P1 by a 2.3s margin ahead of Andrea Iannone. ‘

‘The Maniac” Iannone was tenacious in his leap into the first corner, jumping up from P6 into P2. He nipped at Bulega’s heels in the first laps of the race, posing Bulega’s greatest threat.

Danilo Petrucci (Barni Spark Racing Team) rounded out the podium, and while a gap separated him from Bulega and Iannone in the top two spots, he did well to hold on to P3 from a spirited attack from Scott Redding (MGM Bonovo).

Toprak Razgatlioglu and Alvaro Bautista saw their Superpole races squandered as they both ran wide through the gravel and onto the grass in Lap 1’s Turn 4, ruining both their races as they finished 13th and 19th respectivly.

Scott Redding once again found himself in the midst of the action and clashing with the other Independent Ducati’s, this time battling with Danilo Petrucci for P3. As Petrucci pulled away later in the race, the hunter became the hunted as Sam Lowes (ELF Marc VDS Racing Team) challenged his fellow Englishman for his P4 position.

Redding rose to the occasion to hang on to 4th place while Lowes landed his best-ever race result in World Superbike in 5th, his prior best being a P6 in last year’s Race 2 in Assen. Andrea Locatelli did what he does at Phillip Island and secured another strong result, this time a P6 to score four points in the Championship.

The returning Bimota project saw their riders once again finish within close proximity, Alex Lowes and Axel Bassani both finished within the points in P7 and P9 respectively. Between them, Rookie Yari Montella showed his caliber as a rider and claimed his first-ever points in WorldSBK, a feather in the cap of the young Italian as he will look forward to building on this momentum.

Garrett Gerloff fell victim to a hectic Lap one Turn four, a congested corner entry for the grid saw Tetsuda Nagashima wipe out and slide into Gerloff atop his bike, mechanically inhibiting his bike and the Texan rider from continuing. In the same encounter, Honda HRC rider Tetsuta Nagashima crashed as well. He finished the lap, came to the pits early and called it a day.

Featured Image: WorldSBK