Aragon WSBK: Bautista stays unbeaten, Rea battles to second

Alvaro Bautista went lights-to-flag in the final race at Aragon to score his ninth consecutive World Superbike victory as Jonathan Rea kept his streak of second-place finishes alive with a last-lap move.

Bautista had a lead of one second already after the opening lap, and eventually took the chequered flag by 6.8s after giving up almost three seconds on the last lap.

Behind him, second place was a closely contested affair between Kawasaki duo Rea and Leon Haslam, as well as Ducati's Chaz Davies and Yamaha's Alex Lowes.

Davies made a move on Rea on the second lap and held the position for the majority of the race as Rea was forced into battles with Lowes and Haslam.

While Lowes faded late into the race, Haslam kept putting pressure on Rea, the duo switching positions a couple of times.

But Rea finally cleared his teammate and could focus on Davies on the last two laps and, after an unsuccessful initial attempt, he took advantage of his rival running wide at Turn 1 of the last lap and salvaged second.

Davies settled for third, closely followed by Haslam, while Lowes in fifth fell to four second behind.

GoEleven Ducati's Eugene Laverty was best of the rest in sixth, fending off Jordi Torres (Pedercini Kawasaki) and Michael Van der Mark (Yamaha).

The top 10 was completed by Michael Ruben Rinaldi (Barni Ducati) and Sandro Cortese (GRT Yamaha).

Toprak Razgatlioglu retired with a bike failure and Alessandro Delbianco, who had a ride-through penalty for irresponsible riding in Race 1, also didn't finish the race.

BMW's Tom Sykes, who had enjoyed his strongest weekend of the season so far with two fifth-place finishes, was a lowly 12th this time around.

Race results

Cla	#	Rider	Bike	Laps	Gap
1	19	Alvaro Bautista	Ducati	18
2	1	Jonathan Rea	Kawasaki	18	6.867
3	7	Chaz Davies	Ducati	18	7.127
4	91	Leon Haslam	Kawasaki	18	7.581
5	22	Alex Lowes	Yamaha	18	11.549
6	50	Eugene Laverty	Ducati	18	16.797
7	81	Jordi Torres	Kawasaki	18	17.825
8	60	Michael van der Mark	Yamaha	18	18.788
9	21	Michael Ruben Rinaldi	Ducati	18	19.329
10	11	Sandro Cortese	Yamaha	18	20.351
11	33	Marco Melandri	Yamaha	18	23.546
12	66	Tom Sykes	BMW	18	23.974
13	2	Leon Camier	Honda	18	35.177
14	23	Ryuichi Kiyonari	Honda	18
15	28	Markus Reiterberger	BMW	18
DNF	52	Alessandro Delbianco	Honda
DNF	54	Toprak Razgatlioglu	Kawasaki