WorldSBK Netherlands results, Race 2 - Historic result and post-race penalties

This weekend sees the resumption of the 2023 World Superbike Championship with the third round of the season at Assen in the Netherlands. This page will be updated with WorldSBK Netherlands results throughout this weekend, as the likes of Toprak Razgatlioglu and Jonathan Rea try to recover some ground on early championship leader Alvaro Bautista.

Overview

Race 2 - Bautista completes historic triple for Ducati's 400th win

Superpole Race - Bautista makes it a double in Assen with sprint race superiority

Race 1 - Bautista makes it six wins from seven races in Assen Race 1

Superpole - Continued domination from Bautista, who takes his first Superpole of the year

FP2 - A perfect Friday for Bautista, he tops both sessions as a red flag is thrown in FP2

FP1 - Bautista kicks off Dutch weekend on top with ominous pace

Race 2

Alvaro Bautista started from pole position as he sought a perfect triple at the Dutch WorldSBK in Assen. As in Race 1, the Spaniard’s endurance proved unmatchable for his rivals, as he pulled away in the second half of the race to record his eighth win of 2023.

Alex Lowes’ race was compromised on the sighting lap, on which he crashed at turn eight, Stekkenwal. He was able to start the race, but had to start from the back of the grid.

From pole position, Alvaro Bautista made the holeshot quite comfortably at the second time of asking, while Toprak Razgatlioglu was able to pass Jonathan Rea for second place at the start.

In the first five laps, there was a breakaway of five at the front. Bautista, Razgatlioglu and Rea were able to pull clear along with Axel Bassani and Andrea Locatelli. 

The latter two began to drop back on lap six, but were then promoted a position each when Rea crashed at turn nine, leaving only the Yamaha of Razgatlioglu to fight Bautista's #1 Ducati.

On lap eight, Bautista pulled the pin. By lap 10, he was 1.5 seconds clear, and the race at the front was as good as run with half-distance left to complete.

Bautista’s third win of the weekend in Assen was his eighth of the season. The only race he has not won so far in 2023 is also the only race he has failed to finish - the Superpole Race in Indonesia. In addition to an eighth victory of the season, it was a 40th win for Bautista. 10-times better is the record of Ducati, which now stands at 400 WorldSBK race wins.

Razgatlioglu had nothing for Bautista’s pace, but he was also far clear of those behind. He took second place, and his position in the championship is strengthened by the retirement of Rea, with whom the #54 is most likely to fight for second in the championship down the stretch. 

The battle behind Razgatlioglu was more interesting, with Andrea Locatelli fighting with Axel Bassani for the final podium position. 

In the closing stages, Locatelli was able to pull away from his compatriot, Bassani, and secure himself in third place. 

Bassani, meanwhile, was on his way to securing his place as the top independent rider in fourth place, ahead of Dominique Aegerter, but he ran out of tyre towards the end, and was caught by the Swiss, who tried to pass him at the final chicane. Bassani stood up in the middle of the chicane and cut the second part of it, for which the stewards demoted him one position to fifth, promoting Aegerter to fourth and the top independent rider; while his teammate, Remy Gardner, completed the top six.

Scott Redding was seventh, and the top BMW finisher, while Danilo Petrucci was eighth, Alex Lowes recovered to ninth, and Michael Ruben Rinaldi took his first top 10 finish of the weekend in 10th place.

A crash for Michael van der Mark early in the race saw him taken to hospital. The concerns surround his leg, but at the time of writing there are no details on the #60’s condition. He was seen waving to the fans in the grandstand as he was carted into the back of the ambulance. (UPDATE, 18:28, 23/04/2023: Michael van der Mark has been diagnosed with a fracture of the left femur.)

Full WorldSBK Netherlands results from Race 2 in Assen are below.

2023 WorldSBK Championship | Assen, Netherlands | Race 2 Results

Superpole Race

The Superpole Race in Assen promised to be perhaps the best chance for the rivals of Alvaro Bautista to beat the reigning WorldSBK champion this weekend at round three of the 2023 season. In the end, nobody could threaten Bautista, who took his second win of the weekend.

On the warm-up lap, there was a problem for Loris Baz, and that resulted in a delayed start, as the Frenchman’s #76 BMW spewed a significant amount of fluid over the track in the fast Ruskenhoek section of the track, and into the Stekkenwal corner. The delay led to a reduction in race distance from 10 laps to eight.

Alvaro Bautista started from pole position for the first time in a Superpole Race this year. The grid penalty that he and Axel Bassani picked up in Superpole applied only to Race 1, and so they resumed their original qualifying positions of first and eighth, respectively.

Despite his better grid position, Bautista still could not make the holeshot, which instead went to Jonathan Rea, while Bautista himself was second, and Toprak Razgatlioglu maintained his grid position in third.

Bautista, though, led the first lap, having powered his way by Rea between the Meeuwenmeer and Hoge Heide.

Through the middle of the race, Bautista, Rea, Razgatlioglu and fourth-placed Alex Lowes pulled four seconds clear of the battle behind, but between the front three themselves there was no change.

Onto the final lap, Bautista had a gap of over half-a-second, and that proved insurmountable for Rea behind. Bautista won his seventh race from the first eight of the season, and his second Superpole Race win, by 0.916 seconds. 

In second place was Jonathan Rea, ahead of Toprak Razgatlioglu, who simply had nothing for Ducati’s Bautista in the final three laps of the race.

 
Alex Lowes took what turned into a relatively lonely fourth place, ahead of Andrea Locatelli who led the chasing pack in fifth. Axel Bassani rounded out the top six, ahead of Dominique Aegerter, Scott Redding on the top BMW, Xavi Vierge (top Honda), and Michael van der Mark, who completed the top 10, but misses out on a top-nine grid slot for Race 2.

Full WorldSBK Netherlands results from the Superpole Race in Assen are below.

2023 WorldSBK Championship | Assen, Netherlands | Superpole Race Results

Race 1

After the sunny conditions of Superpole, clouds returned to Assen for the start of the first WorldSBK race of the weekend in Assen. Alvaro Bautista took victory, with a margin of over three seconds in the end.

From pole position, Jonathan Rea made a good launch, and maintained the lead. Rea made the holeshot ahead of Toprak Razgatlioglu and Alvaro Bautista. 

After the first two laps, despite attempts from Alex Lowes to disrupt the hegemony of WorldSBK’s dominant three, Jonathan Rea, Toprak Razgatlioglu, and Alvaro Bautista were beginning to break away.

Bautista was able to find his way by Razgatlioglu into second place on lap four, but it took until lap nine for him to find his way past Rea and into the lead. 

Once Bautista hit the front, he and Rea began to pull away from Razgatlioglu in third. Rea, though, could not be shaken from the rear wheel of the lead Ducati.

Rea’s pressure was eventually broken. On lap 16, Bautista extended his advantage to one second, and by the end of lap 17, it was over two seconds. It was hard to say that Rea’s pace had dropped, since he was not falling back towards Razgatlioglu particularly dramatically. This was late-race Bautista superiority, and the extent of such superirity makes it hard to envisage Bautista's rivals finding a way to beat him.. 

Bautista’s winning margin in the end was 3.148 seconds, although he, at one point, was over four seconds clear of Rea, who in the end finished second, 0.743 seconds ahead of Toprak Razgatlioglu, who completed the podium.

Andrea Locatelli made it a Pata Yamaha 3-4, ahead of Axel Bassani who finished as top independent rider in fifth, and Dominique Aegerter who put the third Yamaha in the top six.

Alex Lowes finished seventh after a late tyre drop-off, ahead of Remy Gardner in eighth, Danilo Petrucci in ninth, and 10th-placed Scott Redding.

Full WorldSBK Netherlands results from Race 1 in Assen are below.

2023 WorldSBK Championship | Assen, Netherlands | Race 1 Result

Superpole

UPDATE: Due to riding slowly on the racing line on the exit of the pits and blocking the Bonovo Action BMW riders, Loris Baz and Garrett Gerloff, in Superpole, both Alvaro Bautista and Axel Bassani have been given three-place grid penalties.

Superpole for round three of the 2023 Superbike World Championship might well have taken place in the rain, as the preceding third practice session had done. Instead, the sun came out and the track dried in time for Superpole, which was topped by Alvaro Bautisa, who will start on pole position for the first full-length race and the Superpole Race tomorrow. 

Just as he did in FP2 on Friday afternoon, Alex Lowes set the early pace, this time ahead of Jonathan Rea, his factory Kawasaki teammate, with Alvaro Bautista in third place.

Rea then took pole position having extended his first run, before Alvaro Bautista hit the top of the time sheets with his first lap on the Pirelli SCQ tyre, his 1:33.542 proving enough for his first pole position of the season.

Jonathan Rea was able to hang on for second place, while Toprak Razgatlioglu qualified third.

Alex Lowes will head up the second row in fourth place, ahead of Scott Redding and Andrea Locatelli; while Dominique Aegerter will start on the third row in seventh place, ahead of Axel Bassani and Danilo Petrucci. 

The qualifying top 10 is rounded out by the Honda of Iker Lecuona, who is joined by Remy Gardner and Xavi Vierge on the fourth row.

The closeness of WorldSBK in Assen this year was highlighted in Superpole, as 16 riders were within one second of pole position, as far back as Michael Ruben Rinaldi on the second factory Ducati, who was 0.946 seconds slower than his teammate.

Full WorldSBK Netherlands results from Superpole in Assen are below.

2023 WorldSBK Championship | Assen, Netherlands | Superpole Results

The grid after the above-mentioned grid penalties for Bassani and Bautista is below.

FP2

Second practice for the WorldSBK riders in Assen continued in the dry conditions that were present in the morning. The session was topped by Alvaro Bautista, who completed a perfect Friday.

The session did not start in the best way for Michael Ruben Rinaldi, whose Ducati Panigale V4 R suffered a problem with the radiator in the first minutes of the session. Water and steam poured from the front of the #21 Ducati as Rinaldi pulled off at turn eight, but there was no issue with fluids on the track. Rinaldi’s session, though, was over.

The session was topped early on by Alex Lowes, and he remained at the front, ahead of Alvaro Bautista and Remy Gardner, until there was a red flag for perhaps the most bizarre reason in the history of WorldSBK, as an inflatable crocodile floated its way onto the track at the end of the Veenslang, the back straight. Thankfully, it was not an especially long red flag, and the session soon resumed.

The resumption of the session saw the resumption of Alvaro Bautista at the top. He beat Lowes’ best time by 0.231 seconds, while Jonathan Rea made it a Kawasaki 2-3 by the end of FP2. 

In fourth place was Dominique Aegerter who finished Friday as the top Yamaha rider, ahead of his GRT teammate Remy Gardner, while the top BMW was Michael van der Mark in sixth place.

Axel Bassani was seventh, and second-placed Ducati, ahead of Andrea Locatelli, the second BMW of Garrett Gerloff, and Toprak Razgatlioglu who completed the top 10.

The issues that stopped Loris Baz’s first practice early were confirmed to be bike-related. He got back out in FP2, but was only 18th. The early blow-up for Rinaldi left him 16th.

Full WorldSBK Netherlands results from FP2 in Assen are below.

2023 WorldSBK Championship | Assen, Netherlands | FP2 Results

FP1

The third race weekend of the 2023 WorldSBK season began in the dry. This is never a certainty in any circuit, but in Assen this is especially true. 

What is generally quite certain in Assen is that Jonathan Rea will be fast, and in FP1 there were no surprises on this front, although Alvaro Bautista was able to stay close to Rea’s early pace.

Towards the end of the session, Bautista topped the session for the first time, and he stayed there until the end. Bautista’s initial advantage was 0.076 seconds, but at the end of the session he increased it to 0.182 seconds over Kawasaki's Rea. 

The real concern for the rest, though, was Bautista’s consistency. For five or six laps in a row, Bautista was lapping in mid-to-high 1:34s. For context, the only other rider to do one lap in the 1:34s was Rea, who finished the session second-fastest.

Remy Gardner was impressive in third place, while Andrea Locatelli and Scott Redding completed the top five. 

Toprak Razgatlioglu was sixth, ahead of Garrett Gerloff, Axel Bassani, Alex Lowes, and Dominique Aegerter who rounded out the top 10.

Loris Baz, who was declared fit to ride on Thursday after his broken ankle in Indonesia, stopped his session early, although it is currently unclear whether that was for reasons related to his ankle or because of bike issues.

Full WorldSBK Netherlands results from FP1 in Assen are below.

2023 WorldSBK Championship | Assen, Netherlands | FP1 Results

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