World Superbike; Bautista leads Rea in Superpole race

As was the case in Saturday’s opening contest, there was little polesitter Iker Lecuona could do little to hold on the lead as Bautista rocketed to the front from the middle of the second row.

There was more drama for the Honda rider as he crashed out from the race on a frantic opening lap that also saw Andrea Locatelli retire from third with a technical issue, leaving Kawasaki duo Alex Lowes and Jonathan Rea behind Bautista’s Ducati.

For the first part of the 10-lap event, Lowes and Rea kept the pressure up on the Spaniard, trying to make sure he remained within striking distance for a late attack.

But Bautista slowly but steadily started pulling away from the Kawasakis and by lap 6 he had built up an advantage of a full one second.

This meant that he could cruise to the finish line, securing his second consecutive victory of the Barcelona weekend by 1.185s.

Having swapped places with teammate Lowes on the opening lap, Rea was able to repass the 32-year-old at the start of the final tour to claim second and limit the damage in the standings to runaway leader Bautista.

Razgatlioglu suffered a horror start on his Yamaha from eighth on the grid and dropped outside of the top 10, leaving him with a mountain to climb in the rest of the race.

Although he was able to dispatch his rivals with relative ease, by the time he had passed Michael Ruben Rinaldi’s Ducati for fourth on lap five the top three had pulled out a gap of over two seconds.

That meant he had no chances to salvage a podium or book a spot on the front row of the grid for Sunday’s final full-distance race, the Turkish rider eventually settling for fourth position.

It puts Bautista a full 50 points clear of the reigning champion with the final Barcelona race and four more rounds still to run, with Rea another four points adrift on his works Kawasaki.

Fifth place in the race went to Rinaldi, while GoEleven Ducati’s Philipp Oettl led a pack of riders in sixth to secure the best result of his short WSBK career.

Xaxi Vierge shadowed Oettl in the sole-surviving Honda and was followed by the factory BMW of Scott Redding, while Bonovo rider Loris Baz snatched the all-important ninth position on the final turn from GRT Yamaha rider Garrett Gerloff.

Axel Bassani finished outside the points in 16th after running off the track at Turn 1 while being part of the same group of riders as Oettl, Vierge and Redding.

Redding’s teammate Michael van der Mark joined Honda’s…