The Pirelli Dutch Round of the FIM World Superbike Championship was dominated entirely by Ducati, not only in the premier class, but also in WorldSSP. Álvaro Bautista (Aruba.It Racing – Ducati) won all the Superbike races of the weekend and Nicolò Bulega (Aruba Racing WorldSSP Team) did the same in Supersport.Holding the Yamaha colours high was Humberto Maier (Yamaha MS Racing/AD78 Latin America Team) who won the second WorldSSP330 race.
Throughout the weekend, more or less all of the solutions were used that Pirelli chose for this round. This demonstrates both that the selection was correct and that all the tyres, on some tracks and with some weather conditions, can be very close to one another in terms of performance thanks to the vast range of use and the versatility achieved. In the Superpole Race, shortened to 8 laps due to a technical problem, Álvaro Bautista (Aruba.It Racing – Ducati), Jonathan Rea (Kawasaki Racing Team WorldSBK) and Toprak Razgatlioglu (Pata Yamaha Prometeon WorldSBK) remained the undisputed protagonists. Unlike yesterday, today the Spanish rider started from pole position and maintained the race lead from start to finish. Just like in Race 1, he finished ahead of Rea and Razgatlioglu. The Ducati rider used the SC1 front and SCX rear tyre, whereas Rea and Razgatlioglu opted for the SCX-A (B0800 specification) at the rear combined with the SC2 at the front in the Kawasaki rider’s case and the SC1 for the Yamaha rider. In general, the standard SCX was the most used rear solution, whereas at the front, the SC1 and SC2 split the grid equally.
In Race 2, the rear SCX-A solution (B0800 specification) took back the spotlight as the undisputed star of the show, garnering favour from most of the riders. At the front, on the other hand, the number of riders using the standard SC2 Just a few laps in, the race lost one of its protagonists: Jonathan Rea, who had been battling for the lead with Bautista up to that point, crashed out and was forced to retire. At that point, only Toprak Razgatlioglu was left to threaten his leadership, but he was powerless against Bautista’s super power. This gave the latter yet another win in the third and final race of the weekend, finishing ahead of Yamaha factory riders Razgatlioglu and Andrea Locatelli.
