World Superbike: Rinaldi gets first win as Redding crashes

Michael Ruben Rinaldi secured his first World Superbike race victory with a dominating performance in the first race of the weekend at Aragon ahead of Jonathan Rea, as Scott Redding crashed out.

Go Eleven Ducati rider Rinaldi, who had never previously finished a WSBK race higher than fourth, seized the lead from poleman Rea at the start of the second lap of 18 before making good his escape at the head of the field.

Kawasaki rider Rea maintained the lead off the line ahead of the Ducatis of Redding and Rinaldi, but it wasn’t long before Rinaldi dispatched his works counterpart Redding and began to attack Rea for the lead.

The Italian came close to making a move stick on Rea at the final corner, and after sticking to the inside of the five-time world champion Rinaldi was able to complete the move at Turn 1.

From there, Rinaldi proceeded to pull away by a second after the fifth lap, and by lap 10 his advantage was out to more than four seconds.

He finally crossed the line with 5.8s in hand to deliver Go Eleven’s first win in the championship and the first for any satellite Ducati rider since 2012.

Second-placed Rea meanwhile came away with an enhanced 30-point lead at the head of the championship as his nearest rival Redding crashed out of third on lap 8.

Redding was coming under heavy pressure from the Honda of Alvaro Bautista in the fight for the final podium spot when he simply lost the front heading into Turn 4, recording his first DNF of the 2020 season and of his WSBK career.

Bautista was later passed by Redding’s works Ducati teammate Chaz Davies for third before crashing himself at Turn 14.

That opened the door for Yamaha man Michael van der Mark to finish fourth ahead of teammate Toprak Razgatlioglu.

Sixth went to Alex Lowes, who ran wide at Turn 1 and dropped to as low as 10th before battling his way back past the Honda of Leon Haslam despite suffering with illness.

Behind Haslam, Eugene Laverty secured his best finish of the year so far on the lead BMW in eighth, ahead of the GRT Yamaha of Federico Caricasulo and the second BMW of Tom Sykes. 

In his first-ever WSBK race, MotoE champion Matteo Ferrari took two points for a 14th place finish aboard the Motocorsa Ducati.

Joining Redding and Bautista on the list of retirees were Marco Melandri (Barni Ducati), Pedercini Kawasaki substitute Roman Ramos and Sylvain Barrier (Brixx Ducati).

Race results:

Cla#RiderBikeLapsTime
121 Michael Ruben RinaldiDucati18 
21 Jonathan ReaKawasaki18 5.888
37 Chaz DaviesDucati18 10.035
460 Michael van der MarkYamaha18 15.965
554 Toprak RazgatliogluYamaha18 19.357
622 Alex LowesKawasaki18 24.138
791 Leon HaslamHonda18 24.275
850 Eugene LavertyBMW18 24.749
964 Federico CaricasuloYamaha18 25.437
1066 Tom SykesBMW18 26.796
1131 Garrett GerloffYamaha18 27.354
1276 Loris BazYamaha18 28.096
1312 Xavi ForesKawasaki18 33.131
1471 Matteo FerrariDucati18 44.847
1513 Takumi TakahashiHonda18 59.529
1677 Maximilian ScheibKawasaki15 3 laps
 19 Alvaro BautistaHonda14 4 laps
 40 Roman RamosKawasaki14 4 laps
 45 Scott ReddingDucati7 11 laps
 33 Marco MelandriDucati6 12 laps
 20 Sylvain Barrier Ducati0 
View full results


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