WorldSBK Aragon Race 2 Results | Dominant Alvaro Bautista doubles up at Aragon

Alvaro Bautista leaves the opening round of the 2022 WorldSBK Championship with an early lead in the overall standings after rattling off his second win of the weekend at Motorland Aragon in formidable fashion.

Having rolled back the years with his first win since 2019 in Sunday morning’s Superpole Race, Bautista proved similarly commanding in the longer Race 2 feature to lead from almost start-to-finish.

A perfect performance to cap off a redemptive return to form for Bautista in his first event back with the Aruba.it Ducati team he scored 15 victories with in 2019, the Spaniard went a long way to ‘announcing’ his candidacy for a title challenge by leaving favourites Jonathan Rea and Toprak Razgatlioglu firmly in his wake.

Mirroring the thread of his Superpole Race win, though Rea got the holeshot into Turn 1, Bautista swept into the lead along the back straight to complete the opening lap ahead.

Helped in part by his rivals tripping over one another as they disputed the remaining podium spots, Bautista got his head down to sprint into the distance, crossing the line more than four seconds clear of the opposition.

If Bautista had it easy out front then it was a busier afternoon for his main rivals as Rea, Razgatlioglu and Michael Ruben Rinaldi slugged it out for the podium.

Showing a marked upturn in performance compared with Race 1, Rinaldi battled hard early to position himself for a Ducati 1-2, the Italian muscling his way past Rea at Turn 1 on lao four. However, despite a brief rally that brought him into range of his team-mate ahead, Rinaldi would eventually wane back into the clutches of Rea during the second-half of the race.

With Rea hitting back on Lap 11, the Ulsterman kept it tidy to extend his consecutive run of podium finishes at Aragon to 22, while Razgatlioglu would also get the better of the Italian to complete a brace of rostrum results as the Turk got his title defence off to a solid, if muted start.

Rinaldi held firm for a third fourth place finish of the weekend, comfortably ahead of Alex Lowes, who endured a lonely afternoon in fifth place after Andrea Locatelli dropped his Pata Yamaha at Turn 9 on lap two.

Axel Bassani rounded off his weekend with a fine sixth place finish on the Motocorsa Ducati, well clear of a busy four-way battle for seventh place that was eventually won by Loris Baz, ahead of top Honda rider Xavi Vierge and GRT Yamaha’s Garrett Gerloff, with Iker Lecuona rounding out the top ten.

Behind them, Lucas Mahias came through for 11th, followed by Eugene Laverty, Philipp Oettl and Roberto Tamburini, while ‘super sub’ Ilya Mikhalchik spared some blushes for the factory BMW team by recovering to 15th for the final point on a weekend that saw Scott Redding complete a very sobering first outing on the M 1000 RR by retiring to the pits with technical issues having notched up just a single digit from the three races.

2022 WorldSBK Championship | Motorland Aragon, Spain | Race 2 RESULTS