Despite being forced to effectively miss two complete rounds due to the pneumothorax suffered in the accident which occurred in the first free practice at Magny-Cours, Toprak Razgatlioglu has the opportunity to try to seize his second Superbike world title with a weekend to spare .
The BMW driver arrives at the penultimate stage of Estoril with a 39 point margin over his direct pursuer Nicolò Bulega and to close the score he should start again from Portugal with at least 62 points of advantage. This means that if he manages to score 23 points more than the Ducati rider he will be world champion.
However, not an easy task, because even in the case of a hat-trick the Turk would need the Italian driver to not be able to do better than third place in each of the heats. It is therefore clear that the scenario will then become further complicated if his results are inferior, but it is not even easy to trace all the scenarios when there are 62 points up for grabs between all three races.
Toprak Razgatlioglu, BMW Motorrad WorldSBK Team
Photo credit: Gold and Goose / Motorsport Images
The number to keep in mind is therefore that +23 that Toprak must try to achieve in order to celebrate. We must not forget that, according to mathematics, Alvaro Bautista would also still be in the running, but the possibility of the Spaniard being able to achieve a hat-trick of world titles is truly slim: the reigning Ducati world champion is in fact 81 points behind, which means say that he would have to recover at least 20 to still remain in the running.
Even with a hat-trick, in fact, Alvaro would not be able to match Razgatlioglu’s number of victories in the final round in Jerez. Therefore, he must make sure to get below the 62 points that will be up for grabs in Spain to continue to hope.
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