After inheriting pole position but falling to third at the start, Toprak Razgatlioglu fresh from the news of his move to MotoGP calmly retook the lead of Race 1 at the Pirelli Emilia-Romagna Round to ominously breeze past home hero Nicolo Bulega.
In the 30 Degrees Celsius Saturday afternoon sunshine, there was some great action on lap 1 as Bulega shot through from 4th on the grid (having been penalised three spots after going fastest in Superpole) to take the lead through the fast turn 11 from Axel Bassani. Bassani had stolen the lead after Razgatlioglu ran wide through the long left-hander of turn 5 while Dominique Aegerter and Bahattin Sofuoglu both went down at the same spot seconds later.
Alex Lowes put a move on Andrea Locatelli for 4th on lap 2 but just seconds later his Bimota teammate Bassani crashed out, as did Andrea Iannone. This left Razgatlioglu free to chase after Bulega and the two left Lowes behind on track, with the gap already being at 4 seconds by lap 4.
By the 5th lap, Razgatlioglu was confidently closing on Bulega and easily swept past in a move that saw him encounter little defence. Bulega simply had to accept that his BMW rival was a cut above the rest at the circuit where the Turk had performed a hat-trick one year ago and the race was ultimately settled at this point.
Danilo Petrucci had passed Locatelli for 4th and set about catching Lowes for 3rd. It appeared that Petrucci had sealed the deal but with 6 laps to go Lowes retaliated, only for the Italian to get back ahead a couple of corners later in an interesting duel for the final spot on the podium.
Behind the top 4 came Locatelli who held off Alvaro Bautista for 5th then Sam Lowes and Yari Montella were behind and closely contested 7th place. Scott Redding sandwiched the Honda duo with Jonathan Rea, Ryan Vickers, Garrett Gerloff and a returning Michael Ruben Rinaldi rounding out the points scorers.
RACE 1 RESULTS
Feature Image Credit: WorldSBK
