2019 Phillip Island WorldSBK Results: Ducati V4 R Domination

2019 Phillip Island World Superbike Results

The opening round of the 2019 World Superbike Championship is in the books, and the Phillip Island race was a historic one for Ducati and Alvaro Bautista.

Both the Ducati Panigale V4 R and Bautista claimed their debut WorldSBK wins Saturday with a dominating performance.

Bautista, who joined WorldSBK following nine years of competition in the premier MotoGP class, beat four-time World Superbike Champion Jonathan Rea (Kawasaki Racing Team ZX-10RR) to the line by nearly 15 seconds.

The Aruba.it Racing Ducati pilot continued this performance Sunday when he won the 10-lap Superpole Race and Race 2. His Race 2 performance was also dominant; the Spaniard finished 12.195 seconds ahead of Rea when the 22-lap race was completed.

Claiming third was Rea’s teammate Leon Haslam, who also finished third in race one. Haslam finished 12.454 seconds behind Bautista.

“It has been a perfect weekend and my Superbike debut couldn’t have been better,” Alvaro Bautista said. “We made a clean sweep of everything by winning race 1, the Superpole race and race 2. If people had said to me before that I would have won three races, I wouldn’t have believed them, but we worked hard during the tests to prepare a fantastic bike. In this morning’s Superpole race I had a lot of fun fighting with Rea, I knew that he was very strong and that he was always pushing.

“The pace was incredible and I had to concentrate so hard, but in the end I got the better of him. In race 2 the track conditions were more difficult than in the morning, and it was important to save the tires because of the higher track temperature, so I pushed hard in the early laps to try and manage the situation at the end.

“I’m so happy with the results, today is a day I will never forget! A big thanks to the Aruba team, to Ducati and to my crew for making this all possible! Now we have to continue to work hard, we’re only at the beginning and I think it’s going to be a very top-level championship.”

The Pata Yamaha WorldSBK Team duo of Michael van der Mark and Alex Lowes followed in fourth and fifth, respectively. GRT Yamaha’s Michael Melandri finished sixth, ahead of Bautista’s teammate Chaz Davies.

Rounding out the top 10 in Phillip Island World Superbike race two were GRT Yamaha’s Sandro Cortese; Team Goeleven Ducati’s Eugene Laverty; and Moriwaki Althea Honda’s Leon Camier.

After one of 13 rounds, Bautista has the lead in the WSBK championship standings with 62 points – 13 ahead of Rea.

The series now breaks for three weeks ahead of the Thai round at Chang International Circuit in Buriram, Thailand.

Photos by Cori Mitchell

2019 Phillip Island World Superbike Results, Race 2: