With Sunday’s Superpole Race and second Superbike race, the twelfth and final WorldSBK round has drawn to a close at the Jerez Circuit in Spain.
This was Kawasaki Puccetti Racing’s final season as a privateer team, as in 2025 they will become the factory Kawasaki team in the production-derived series.
Yesterday, Tito Rabat achieved eighteenth place in Superpole, before crossing the line sixteenth in Race 1, just missing out on points.
Today the Spaniard was back out for the Superpole Race, which is a ten-lap sprint. He made a good start and in the limited laps available, Tito climbed up to finish the race in fifteenth place.
In Race 2, the last of the 2024 season, Rabat maintained a good pace, making up places and reaching the points zone. He could have probably fought for the top ten had the race not been red-flagged during the course of lap seventeen. Considering this was the last race of the season and a home round for Tito, the rider stopped to celebrate with his fans and failed to return his bike to the garage within the five-minute cut off time dictated by the regulation. This unfortunately meant that Rabat was disqualified.
Circuito de Jerez – Spain
Superbike World Championship
Superpole Race: 1) Bulega (Ducati) – 2) Razgatlioglu (BMW) – 3) Lowes (Kawasaki) – 4) Petrucci (Ducati) – 5) Locatelli (Yamaha) – 6) Van der Mark (BMW) …….15) Rabat (Kawasaki)
Race 2 – 1) Razgatlioglu (BMW) – 2) Bulega (Ducati) – 3) Van der Mark (BMW) – 4) Iannone (Ducati) – 5) Lowes (Kawasaki) – 6) Petrucci (Ducati) ……. 15) Rabat (Kawasaki)
Tito Rabat
“We’ve completed our championship with two positive races, in line with what we did at the last few rounds, where we were able to reach a level of competitiveness that saw us score our best results of the season. We’ve constantly moved closer to the frontrunners, and this has been our biggest achievement. Today we ran two good races, completing both in fifteenth place. In race 2, the fact I stopped to celebrate with my fans led to me being disqualified for not having returned the bike to the garage in time, but this does not cancel out our result. It’s been a challenging season but one that has brought many positives, for which I want to thank Manuel Puccetti and all the team’s technicians.”
