Aragon World Superbike Race 1 Results: Iannone takes maiden win after lap one red flag

Andrea Iannone took victory for the first time in WorldSBK in a red flagged Race 1 at Aragon.

Iannone led the first start from the first corner, ahead of Toprak Razgatlioglu and Nicolo Bulega, but the race was red flagged after Sam Lowes crashed at turn four. The Marc VDS Ducati was letting out smoke from turn three to turn four, and Lowes’ crash indicated that fluid had got on his rear tyre. The red flag lasted around 10 minutes as the track was cleaned up, and Lowes was taken to the medical centre and diagnosed with a left shoulder contusion.

When the race was restarted, it was run over 17 laps, and Iannone again made the holeshot, while Bulega had pulled out with a technical issue on the warm-up lap.

Iannone led the race for the most part, defending from Toprak Razgatlioglu who spent much of the race in second place.

The front group was nine-strong at the beginning of the race, but as Iannone pushed the pace towards the end it boiled down to four riders: himself, Razgatlioglu, Garrett Gerloff who had cut through from 10th on the grid, and Alvaro Bautista.

To an extent, there was a stalemate in the closing stages, as Iannone pulled away from Razgatlioglu in the final two laps but Gerloff could not find a way through. When Bautista passed Gerloff at the beginning of the final lap, the American responded to reclaim third at turn four.

Gerloff took his second podium in five races after his Magny-Cours Race 2 third place, while Razgatlioglu took second place behind Iannone to extend his championship lead to 33 points over the non-starting Bulega.

Iannone's win was his first since the 2016 Austrian Grand Prix, his first in WorldSBK. For Go Eleven Ducati, it was a first win since Michael Ruben Rinaldi won at Aragon in 2020, and a fourth win in succession for Independent teams after Danilo Petrucci's Cremona treble.

Petrucci, this time, took fifth place, behind Bautista, but ahead of Iker Lecuona who put Honda again in the top six. Alex Lowes was seventh, ahead of Xavi Vierge, Michael van der Mark, and Andrea Locatelli, who was third at the start, dropped to 16th after a couple of laps, and then came back to 10th.