How Alvaro Bautista can be crowned WorldSBK champion at Portimao
Alvaro Bautista will have his first match point this weekend as he looks to secure his second WorldSBK championship.
Bautista leads Toprak Razgatlioglu by 47 points with just two rounds of the 2023 WorldSBK season to go.
The Ducati rider has been in a league of his own for large parts of this season, winning 21 races compared to Razgatlioglu’s six victories.
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But the reigning world champion has faltered recently, with Imola, Magny-Cours and Aragon seeing him make critical errors in all three rounds.
Bautista still managed to win races on all three of those weekends, and thus stop Razgatlioglu from taking huge chunks out of his points lead.
However, Bautista has still seen his advantage slip from 98 to 47 points over the last four rounds.
With 62 points available in one round, Bautista needs to outscore Razgatlioglu by 15 points or more in Portimao.
The Spaniard will be the hot favourite in the two feature-length races, given his consistent speed and ability to make the rear tyre last for a full race distance.
It’s an area where Bautista has been untouchable in 2023, although teammate Michael Ruben Rinaldi managed to deploy that tactic in Race 1 at Aragon, as he closed down Jonathan Rea and Razgatlioglu before going on to win after Bautista crashed from the lead early on.
If Razgatlioglu remains within 61 points of Bautista at the end of Race 2 on Sunday, then the title fight will go down to the season-finale at Jerez.
Other storylines to watch out for is regarding third in the standings as Rea, who is 53 points ahead of Andrea Locatelli could secure P3 in the championship if he outscores the Italian by nine points or more.
In terms of the top independent rider standings, Axel Bassani is well clear of Danilo Petrucci although the former MotoGP rider can mathematically catch the Motocorsa Ducati rider.
