After FP1, FP2 and Superpole, the World Supersport 300 race at Misano looked like Galang Hendra Pratama’s business, as the Indonesian had dominated all the sessions. But the BIBLION MotoXRacing Yamaha rider was swallowed in the group at the beginning and this way we saw a huge fight for the victory. Who finally triumphed is local wildcard Manuel Bastianelli, who scored his first win on the world stage.
COMEBACK – Bastianelli crossed the line in first place ahead of a huge pack. After starting from 13th place, the rider from Rome found himself outside the points and there he started a great comeback that brought him to the front group. There Bastianelli and about 10 riders more were involved in a real “Overtake Fest” and finally he made the decisive move in the fastest part of the track, where he overtook Luca Grünwald. Then the Italian defended first place from the assault of Mika Pérez and this led him to a stunning home win.
TWO SPANIARDS ON THE PODIUM – Behind Manuel Bastianelli, the podium was completed by Mika Pérez (Kawasaki ParkinGO) and Manuel González (Yamaha MS Racing), who both scored a really important result for themselves: while Pérez stormed back to the front after tough times (lack of results and Brno injury), González reached his first podium finish in WorldSSP300 after showing great potential in the previous races. The potential of “ManuGass” was often blocked by the lack of balance of the different bikes’ performance, but the change did in Brno (rider + bike combined weight) seems to have solved the problem and now also Yamaha riders can constantly fight for the win and the podium, as Pratama had already proved at Brno.
BAD LUCK – This is proved also by the fact that Yamaha, Kawasaki and KTM were all in the front group and finally top 10 includes four Kawasakis Ninja 400, four Yamahas R3 and two KTMs RC390R. We would have seen three “orange” bikes in the front, if wildcard Thomas Brianti hadn’t crashed while fighting for the win. The 15-year-old seemed to manage the situation, but his fall at Variante del Parco stopped his dreaming. The same happened to Dani Valle, who fell halfway the race, and to Scott Deroue, who was stopped by a technical problem at the ninth of 13 laps.
TOP 10 – Back to the classification, Luca Bernardi brought the Team Trasimeno Yamaha to fourth place and so he scored his best result in World Championship. By contrast, a great outside move on Bastianelli at Curva del Tramonto wasn’t enough for Luca Grünwald, since the German KTM Freudenberg rider went down to fifth due to “slipstream game”. The top 10 was closed by María Herrera, Galang Hendra Pratama, Jan-Ole Jähnig, Dorren Loureiro and Ana Carrasco, with the latter remaining first in championship standings.
