Bautista back to winning ways as Rea recovers from freak crash

Full Misano World Superbike Superpole Sprint Race Results

Alvaro Bautista has reasserted his World Superbike championship control with victory in the Misano Superpole race as title rival Jonathan Rea suffered a freak off running in second place before recovering to take fifth.

The Aruba.it Racing Ducati rider bolted off from lights out to move into third place at the first corner having started in fifth, before making quick work of bridging the gap to Rea in the lead.

At the start of Lap 3 of the 10-lap sprint race, Bautista used the power of the Ducati V4 R to blast past Rea down the start-finish straight. The Spaniard rarely looked troubled after taking the lead to storm to his 14th win of the season.

With Rea defending second place, the Kawasaki rider slid off at Turn 10 with two laps to go but holding on to his ZX-10RR handlebars the reigning World Superbike champion pushed his bike over him to flip it around before remounting.

Having not lost much time, Rea re-joined the race initially in sixth place – promoted to fifth at the finish following Tom Sykes’ late technical issue with his BMW – to produce damage limitation. Bautista now leads the championship by 39 points from Rea.

With multiple riders hitting issues late on, including Sandro Cortese who crashed from third place at Turn 16 on Lap 6, Alex Lowes claimed second place for Pata Yamaha to act as redemption after crashing out of the lead in Saturday’s opening race.

Leon Haslam held off a race-long fight with Toprak Razgatlioglu to complete the podium for Kawasaki.

With Rea fifth, Marco Melandri charged back from his grid drop – picked up after taking out Chaz Davies in Jerez – to take sixth place for GRT Yamaha ahead of Barni Ducati duo Michael Ruben Rinaldi and Michele Pirro. Leandro Mercado rounded out the points places in ninth for Orelac Racing Kawasaki.

Davies was another rider to crash, going down at Turn 14 on the third lap, but did re-join to finish in 17th place.