Jerez de la Frontera, last act. Last race of the season, last outing for many riders, who get off their bikes at the checkered flag to embrace new projects. But before the curtain falls on 2023, Alvaro Bautista and Toprak Razgatlioglu gave us a great show. Free from any pressure, the two fought for the victory, fighting without concessions at every corner for all the laps of Race 2, which ended with 32 thousandths separating the two at the finish line.
Toprak Razgatlioglu was the first to pass under the checkered flag, but was betrayed by the track limits when exiting the last corner. The victory of the last race of the season thus went to Alvaro Bautista, who was initially second. Reversed positions on the podium, therefore, for the two protagonists of the world championship who put on a show right up to the end with overtaking and counter-overtaking and making the end of the season exciting.
With the victory in Race 2, Bautista joins Carl Fogarty for the number of victories achieved in Superbike, 59. The Spaniard gave the Aruba.it Racing – Ducati team the teams title. On the occasion of the last outing of 2023, the official lineup took to the track re-proposing the yellow livery already used at Misano. Not only Bautista, Michael Ruben Rinaldi also took part in his last race as an Aruba driver with the same special livery: in the early stages of the race he managed to stay with the leaders, but then fell back as the laps went by, closing Race 2 in sixth position.
Dominique Aegerter, on the other hand, was smiling as he managed to keep pace with the leaders throughout the race, but without ever managing to undermine them. The Swiss achieved his first podium in a long race, replicating the result of this morning’s Superpole Race. The GRT standard bearer is also the best of the independents at the finish line of Race 2. Filippo Conti’s team closes 2023 on a high note, which saw Remy Gardner take the checkered flag in fourth place.
Fifth was Danilo Petrucci ahead of the aforementioned Rinaldi, while Philipp Oettl greeted the Goeleven team’s Ducati with seventh place. Scott Redding, who will always be a BMW driver but with the Bonovo team in 2024, took eighth position in his last race with the official lineup. Closing out the top 10 are Garrett Gerloff and Andrea Locatelli, ninth and tenth respectively.
A particularly emotional last race also for Jonathan Rea, who wanted to give Kawasaki a success and was succeeding. He was in the lead in the early stages of Race 2 after a great start, but slipped and gave the lead to Toprak and Alvaro. Returning to the track, he crossed the finish line in 17th position. After 104 victories, 221 podiums and 39 poles, Rea returned to the Kawasaki garage for the last time, before getting on the Yamaha which he will inherit from Razgatlioglu.
Axel Bassani closes his chapter in Motocorsa in 11th position and will then take Rea’s place in Kawasaki. Michael van der Mark follows, 12th, while the first of the Honda riders is Xavi Vierge. Alex Lowes is absent, declared unfit due to the bad fall in the Superpole Race in which he suffered facial trauma and injuries to his eyelids.
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