Lowes chilling on the grid
Phillip Island is justly renowned for fourseasons-in-one-hour and once again , some very unpredictable rain patterns provided a real challenge for the teams . Cape Barren geese caused even more disruption than the weather with several sessions being redflagged as the geese , which are large , solid and not very bright , wandered or flew into positions that put the riders at risk . And that ’ s before the racing even started .
FREE PRACTICE Once the race weekend kicked off , the Free Practice sessions confirmed that 2022 WorldSBK champion Alvaro Bautista , on the Aruba . it Ducati V4 , was in excellent form whilst his closest rivals from 2022 , Toprak Razgatlioglu ( PATA Yamaha Prometeon R1 ) and Jonathan Rea ( KRT Kawasaki ZX-10RR ) weren ’ t quite on his pace and needed to find something extra before the races . Free Practice can be a little misleading as teams won ’ t necessarily be going for outright lap times and may be taking a more measured approach and testing , for example , race distance tyre wear , so direct comparison of fastest laps doesn ’ t always tell the full story . And so it was with Tissot Superpole where Toprak Razgatlioglu improved his best Free
Practice lap time by over a second to take pole ahead of Bautista and 2022 WorldSBK Supersport champion Dominique Aegerter who was looking very impressive given that it was his first race on the GYTR GRT Yamaha R1 having stepped up from Supersport class to Superbikes .
AND THEY ’ RE OFF ... Then the rain came . Race One , late on Saturday afternoon , started and finished in wet conditions and , whilst Rea moved himself into the lead on lap one and built what looked like a decent lead over Bautista , the Ducati man had it all under control , overtook Rea on lap ten , of twenty-two , and was over three seconds ahead at the finish . Bautista ’ s performance was impressive , he looked completely in control even when he wasn ’ t leading . Pole sitter Toprak got the consolation of third place on the podium . Sunday bought better weather conditions and with two races scheduled for the day , the Tissot Superpole Sprint race and then full-length Race Two , there were a lot of points on offer . In the sprint race , Bautista was untroubled , taking the win a couple of seconds ahead of teammate Michael Rueben Rinaldi who showed some of the talent we know he ’ s got , but wasn ’ t able to demonstrate regularly in 2022 . Toprak was third but the five and a half second gap between him
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