Who crashed most during the 2019 WorldSBK season… and who stayed on?

To finish first, first you have to finish… It’s an old adage but one that can perfectly sum up the 2019 WorldSBK Championship as Jonathan Rea came from (far) behind to defeat Alvaro Bautista in a season that more than ever rewarded consistency over all-out speed.

While Rea certainly had the measure of Bautista during the second-half of the year, it was still a remarkable comeback for a rider that – having seen his new rival romp to 11 straight wins – had to come from 64 points behind to defeat the Ducati rider.

Of course, the margin at the conclusion – a mammoth 165 points – speaks for itself, but Rea only won one more race than his rival. Unfortunately for Bautista, it was crashes at crucial moments that completely unravelled his title challenge.

Even so, he certainly wasn’t the worst offender by any means as figures from Dorna reveal who crashed and how often over the course of 13 rounds and 37 races.

The statistics group together falls suffered during all sessions – FP1, FP2, FP3, Superpole, Race 1, Superpole Race and Race 2 – to give a picture of who was finding the limit of their machines… and who was overstepping it. This includes falls on their own and in collisions that may or may not have been their doing.

The rider most likely to give his mechanics a job to do between sessions was Althea Mie Honda’s Alessandro Delbianco, the rookie Italian scoring the wooden spoon for falling 16 times over the course of the year… four more than any other rider.

Indeed, in what was an inauspicious introduction to WorldSBK competition, Delbianco suffered five of these on the very first weekend in Australia, though his fortunes didn’t fare so much better going forward. That said, he deserves a big round of applause for not suffering a 17th fall in this remarkable bit of bike control in the wet at Donington Park…

Next up, Sandro Cortese was one of the last riders to suffer his first fall of the year but thereafter struggled to stay on as he succumbed to 12 tumbles – injuring his shoulder in the process – while Alex Lowes did a remarkable job of retaining third in the standings given his ten accidents over the course of the year.

Interestingly, Bautista’s record of seven falls puts him in the upper tier overall, but he didn’t come off the Ducati on a race weekend until round six at Jerez… even if this is exactly the point where his season began to unravel.

Title-winner Rea, meanwhile, was stoic on his Kawasaki with only three falls all year – two at Misano and one in the slippery conditions of Magny-Cours. This does, however, include this bizarre fall and remount in Italy.

He wasn’t the steadiest on the bike though with BMW’s Markus Reiterberger coming off just twice all season. It’s a figure matched by Eugene Laverty, though he did break both wrists in one of these accidents which forced him out of four events.

An ignominious shout out though to Loris Baz, who despite only joining the fray from round six, managed to rack up eight accidents during the second-half of the year on the Ten Kate Yamaha.

Here’s the full rundown…

* Eugene Laverty missed 4 events, Leon Camier missed 6 events