Aegerter extends Championship lead with double win

P1 – Dominique Aegerter (Ten Kate Racing Team)

• Recovering from fourth place in the opening lap of the race, Aegerter caught up with Baldassarri and Caricasulo to take his second win in San Juan.
• Leaving Argentina with a 72-point advantage over Baldassarri, Aegerter will have a first chance to win his second WorldSSP title in Race 1 at Mandalika.

“Fantastic weekend, we took the maximum out of it here in San Juan. Pole position with a new lap record, two wins with 50 points. Today’s race was again a big battle. De Rosa crashed; I hope is ok… It’s sad because I expected him to be a good contender to fight for the win. Then, Baldassarri improved a lot compared to yesterday. He had also a good pace. Caricasulo and Baldassarri had really fast bikes, so it was really difficult to overtake them off the slipstream. I could take advantage from the small mistakes they made. Big thanks to the Ten Kate Yamaha Racing team, they did a fantastic job. Taking a lot of points to the last four races, in Indonesia and Australia where I like the tracks. I will try to give my best again.”

P2 – Federico Caricasulo (Althea Racing)

• Caricasulo was fighting at the front and took advantage of Baldassarri’s moment to take second place, his best result of the season so far.
• It was Caricasulo’s third podium place of 2022.

“I’m super happy because we took our best result of this year. The race was more difficult than yesterday because it was hotter, we had less grip, there were more fast riders so it wasn’t easy to stay 19 laps without making any mistakes. I tried to push every lap to stay in the group until the last lap. When Aegerter overtook Baldassarri, it was possible for me to gain second place. I want to thank the team because they did a really good job for me yesterday and we improved the bike for today. If tomorrow we had a third race, I’d have something more to do. But I’m happy like this and now I cannot wait for Indonesia as it’s one of my favourite tracks.”

P3 – Lorenzo Baldassarri (Evan Bros. WorldSSP Yamaha Team)

• Baldassarri was challenging Aegerter for the victory but Aegerter made a move on the Italian rider at Turn 15 on the last lap with Baldassarri finishing in third place.
• He remains second in the Championship standings, 72 points behind Aegerter.

“We can be happy because coming here for the first time we were very fast. Since yesterday we had some issues. For that, I’m not happy. We don’t understand why we are missing the gears. Yesterday we had this problem, today we had this problem and today we could have won and beat Aegerter. But in the end, Aegerter beat us. I had a problem with the change of direction, and I lost the foot rest, and I had a bad exit. When I putted the first gear to try to go in to try to beat Aegerter, I was neutral, and I made third in the end. Today, we were strong, but we lost. Nothing more to say, just that I can’t wait for the next race.”

Niki Tuuli (MV Agusta Reparto Corse) took fourth place claiming his best result of the season so far. Stefano Manzo (Dynavolt Triumph) took fifth place, with three ‘next generation’ machines inside the top five, while Jules Cluzel (GMT94 Yamaha) took sixth place on his final race in Argentina.

To note:

Raffaele De Rosa’s (Orelac Racing VerdNatura WorldSSP) race came to an end on Lap 11 after the Italian crashed at Turn 9 from the lead of the race. Although able to re-join the race, he brought his machine into the pits and retired from the race.

A crash between Oli Bayliss (BARNI Spark Racing Team) and Hannes Soomer (Dynavolt Triumph) put Soomer out of the race, while Bayliss was able to continue although the Australian brought his bike into the pits in the opening stages of the race. Bayliss was taken to the medical centre for a check-up following the crash. At the start of Lap 2, at Turn 1, Luca Bernardi (CM Racing) and Bradley Smith (Ten Kate Racing Yamaha) came together, with Smith out of the race and Bernardi retiring shortly after. Both incidents were placed under investigation by the FIM WorldSBK Stewards, with Bernardi getting a Long Lap Penalty for his next race for his role in the collision with Smith.