WorldSBK Portimao Superpole: Toprak Razgatlioglu blitzes pole position

Toprak Razgatlioglu destroys the lap record to take pole.

Toprak Razgatlioglu has come from nowhere in the Superpole session to swipe the pole position away from Jonathan Rea, breaking his lap record in the process.

Once again it seems that Toprak Razgatlioglu has levelled up his game and is looking even more impressive taking his third ever WorldSBK pole position and only his second with Yamaha, doubling up with consecutive poles after taking pole last weekend in Jerez. Jonathan Rea looked to be the man on pole this weekend leading the session until the final moments when seemingly out of nowhere Toprak made Rea step aside beating his lap time by a huge 0.305 seconds, Razgatlioglu also broke the lap record with a time of 1:40.219 to improve the record by 0.153, for comparison’s sake this is only 1.4 seconds off the MotoGP lap record here.

In third place we saw Leon Haslam take a very rare front row start on the Honda, Honda have been showing strong progress in the previous rounds with Alvaro Bautista taking a podium in Jerez and his teammate now a front row start which bodes well for the future with their all-new rookie line up for 2022 if the rumours of Xavi Vierge and Iker Lecuona are true.

Starting from row two is Scott Redding on the Ducati with Michael van der Mark just behind in fifth to ensure we have five different manufacturers within the top five, all within 0.754 seconds of P1 proving how competitive the class now is that any rider can realistically fight for the top positions regardless of their machinery, Alvaro Bautista joined them on row two and will be aiming for podium glory this afternoon.

In P7 Andrea Locatelli led proceedings over the independent duo of Garrett Gerloff and Loriz Baz, both riders have been consistently riding within the top 10 this weekend and it’s hard to pick who we think will come out on top as the top independent rider in race one later today, rounding out the top 10 is Michael Ruben Rinaldi.

Full results – 

Featured image – Yamaha