WorldSBK Misano Race 1: Michael Ruben Rinaldi takes second victory

Michael Ruben Rinaldi takes his second ever win in WorldSBK.

Italian rider Michael Ruben Rinaldi takes the win on Italian soil on an Italian bike, it’s a dream come true for the rider from Rimini who lives just outside of the circuit, it couldn’t have been any closer to home if he had tried. He has taken his first victory in factory Ducati colours after making the switch from the independent GoEleven Team to the full factory Aruba.it Racing squad, he has struggled slightly in the opening rounds as the pressure rose knowing the weight of a factory ride, thankfully here in Misano he was able to crush any doubts of his promotion to the team taking victory.

It was an incredible start of the race with four riders scrapping out to take the first position coming out of the first corners, Rea would lead before Rinaldi would swoop in from P4 to snatch the lead away from him before Toprak Razgatlioglu overtook the pair of them to briefly take the lead, eventually it would be Rinaldi who would occupy the first position with Jonathan Rea on his tail lap by lap with enough pace to take the victory in the final laps. Rea’s strategy was unable to be used after a stunning save at turn one after he completely lost the front and was forced to save a crash on his knee, exiting stage right onto the grass and only losing one position to Razgatlioglu in the process.

Aside from this it was a fairly uneventful race with Rinaldi taking a confidence-boosting race win as he heads into the rest of the races tomorrow ahead of Razgatlioglu then Jonathan Rea who saved a crash once again to take a podium making it 7/7 podiums so far this year.

Further back was Scott Redding in P4 who stuck with the front guys early on before losing a lot of time and eventually dropping outside of the podium positions ahead of Alex Lowes, a decent race by the pair of them who had Alvaro Bautista on their tail.

Axel Bassani had a stunning race finishing in a very strong P7, the Italian rookie improves on a best result of P11 and has been strong all weekend long, the 21-year-old was the fastest independent rider, this very much could be the start of something incredibly special overtaking Tom Sykes late into the race. Rounding off the top 10 was the BMW of Michael van der Mark who has massively struggled all weekend long, he won’t be happy with a P10 finish but he won’t be sad either.

In P12 we saw Garrett Gerloff recover from a pit lane start to take a decent haul of points beating his teammate behind him, a grand race from the American rider.

Full Results – 

Featured image – Ducati