Donington Park local Alex Lowes won two of the first three races at Australia’s Phillip Island, as the new Motul FIM Superbike World Championship season got off to a spectacularly unpredictable start down under last weekend (24/25 February).
The 2013 Bennetts British Superbike champion traditionally goes well at the venue, but last weekend marked his best ever WorldSBK event, as he won both Sunday contests to power into an early championship lead for Kawasaki.
Series newcomer, reigning World Supersport champion Nicolo Bulega, backed up his pre-season testing form by blasting to pole position for Ducati on Saturday, and duly converted that into victory in his debut race ahead of Yamaha’s Andrea Locatelli and fellow newcomer, ex-MotoGP race winner Andrea Iannone.
But it was Sunday’s drama that stole the headlines, with truly spectacular action in both the Superpole race and race two, with Lowes triumphant in both.
After a strong start to the former, Lowes passed Iannone for the lead at the halfway mark and held on to take his third career WorldSBK win ahead of Locatelli and new BMW recruit Toprak Razgatlioglu, who fended off Ducati’s double reigning champion Alvaro Bautista on the run to the line.
But Lowes’ greatest triumph came in the final contest, as he soared past Bautista around the outside at Lukey Heights on the last lap to double up, with Bautista finishing just 0.048s behind, while Danilo Petrucci claimed his first podium of the year in third.
The form book was well and truly thrown out the window, with contrasting fortunes for the ‘usual’ three protagonists of Bautista, Razgatlioglu and Jonathan Rea. Bautista crashed out of contention in the first race of the year, and only lies fifth in the standings courtesy of fourth and second on Sunday, having dominated the previous two campaigns.
2021 champion Razgatlioglu, now with BMW after ending his successful association with Yamaha, claimed a podium in the Superpole race but an engine failire in race three leaves the Turkish rider eighth in the early reckoning.
But it was a disaster for Rea in his first event for Yamaha, as he struggled to adapt to his new machinery all weekend, with a best finish of 10th in the Superpole event, before ending his weekend with a heavy crash in race two, which brought out the red flags, which fortunately left him relatively unscathed.
Lowes holds a nine point gap at the top of the standings, ahead of Bulega and Locatelli. Iannone and Bautista complete the top-five ahead of Petrucci.
The WorldSBK field heads to Barcelona’s Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya in a month’s time, with further events in the Netherlands and Italy preceding the traditional summer rounds at Donington Park on 12-14 July.
Click here to book tickets for the UK round, with main adult race day admission priced at £45, with further savings for teenagers aged 13-15 and free entry all weekend for under-13s. All tickets include access to the Paddock Show, while camping and grandstand upgrades are also still available.