World Superbikes: Bautista takes Aragon Superpole win ahead of Rea

Alvaro Bautista dominated the World Superbike Championship Superpole sprint race at Aragon ahead of Jonathan Rea and Toprak Razgatlioglu.

Kawasaki’s Rea, who won race one on Saturday, held off champion Razgatlioglu and Michael Ruben Rinaldi in a heated podium battle.

The second feature race takes place at 13:00 BST.

After a thrilling opening race to the season on Saturday, in which Rea triumphed ahead of Bautista, it was another frantic start to the 10-lap sprint race.

Bautista fired into the lead and sat up pole-sitter Razgatlioglu, who in turn was nearly collected by Rea and the 35-year-old had to take avoiding action.

However, the Northern Irishman recovered to slot back into third as Bautista held a comfortable lead after the first lap.

The race settled behind the Spanish rider, back on Ducati for the first time since 2019, but the leading trio were soon caught by the second Ducati of Rinaldi, who battled side-by-side with Rea for third place but the six-time champion came out on top before passing the Yamaha of Razgatlioglu at the final corner of lap four.

The Turkish rider responded on the following straight, which again put Rinaldi on Rea’s tail, and an ambitious move by Rea allowed the Italian though on both the podium rivals.

Rea attempted another aggressive pass on Rinaldi to reclaim his lost position, which incurred a hand gesture from his rival, but Rea made a clean move stick on the penultimate lap to secure second place – albeit 5.1 seconds behind Bautista.

Razgatlioglu, who ended Rea’s six-year domination of the championship last year, out-dragged a frustrated Rinaldi to the finish line for the final podium position.

Rea said he felt he could match Bautista in the early stages before becoming embroiled in the battle for second.

“I couldn’t maximise my acceleration and I got involved in a battle and I had to fight for every position I could get,” he said.

“That was frustrating because, at the beginning, I felt I could have got away with Alvaro.

“I enjoyed fighting for position and I’m happy enough with second.”

Yamaha’s Andrea Locatelli was fifth ahead of Kawasaki’s Alex Lowes and Ducati’s Axel Bassani.

Northern Ireland’s Eugene Laverty was 11th and led home the fellow BMW of Scott Redding, who left Ducati for the 2022 season to allow Bautista a winning return.