Toprak Razgatlioglu (ROKiT BMW Motorrad WorldSBK Team) made it a hat-trick of hat-tricks in the MOTUL FIM Superbike World Championship with two more victories on Sunday at the Autodrom Most. Coming into the weekend on seven wins, the #54 made it ten to claim the second longest winning streak in Championship history as he continues to steal a march on his rivals following a perfect performance during the Czech Round.
The 2021 Champion topped Free Practice 1, Free Practice 2, Free Practice 3, Tissot Superpole and Sunday’s Warm Up session as well as winning all three races. He becomes the first rider to be P1 in every session and race since Alvaro Bautista (Aruba.it Racing – Ducati) did this at Buriram back in 2019 as he made it a third consecutive hat-trick and opened up his Championship lead to 59 points over Nicolo Bulega (Aruba.it Racing – Ducati) in second.
In the Superpole Race, Razgatlioglu initially fell behind Nicolo Bulega and teammate Bautista but took just a couple laps to take the lead again and from there he was able to pull out a gap over the two Ducati riders. It was a similar story in Race 2, as the #11 Ducati got ahead on the opening and remained ahead until the fifth lap. Razgatlioglu made the move for the lead through the second half of the race, before pulling out a gap of more than three seconds on his rivals.
Discussing his incredible winning run, which is the second-longest in WorldSBK history, Razgatlioglu said: “I’m not believing this but now we’ve got 10 wins in a row. At this track, we’re very strong. I’m really happy because in the Championship, we have a big margin. I’m not thinking about this, I’m just focused on going race by race because I need a lot of wins. I need two more wins for the record. This is my target, to get two more wins so I break the record. We’ll see at Portimao. I’m very strong there but I’m just happy for this weekend. We didn’t make any mistakes and three wins is really down to teamwork.”
With Bulega finished second, the #54 extended his lead over his rival to 64 points to give him more than a round’s worth of points in hand, while he’s now got more than 100 points in hand over Bautista in third. He’s the first rider to break the 300-point barrier in 2024 too as his incredible run of form continues. While not wanting to comment on the title fight, Razgatlioglu did assess his rivals’ weekend.
He said: “For Alvaro, I think it wasn’t a good weekend but for Nicolo, it wasn’t bad. First race he lost a little bit, but in the Superpole Race and Race 2, he came back again. For him, everything is good but for Alvaro, I think, this weekend especially, is bad. We have many races to go, and he’ll come back stronger.”
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Source: WorldSBK.com