In a season that had ups and downs Toprak Razgatli0glu bounced back from what was seemingly a season threatening break due to injury and has now clinched the championship in Race 1. Despite Nicolo Bulega leading the race from start to finish Razgatlioglu’s entering point advantage proved to be too far out of reach.
Razgatlioglu’s move to BMW has proved to be the missing key that he needed after falling short last year with Yamaha. He said, “I feel like a World Champion! I’m not feeling any stress. For me, the season’s finished now; we have two more races tomorrow, but I’ll just be enjoying it. It’s been a long season. Nobody believed me or the BMW, but finally they understand we’re World Champions. This is incredible, especially with BMW; they’ve never won the title. Finally, I got my second title and BMW got their first!”
Speaking on the crash that could have ended his season Toprak said, “Maybe the title fight finished in Italy if I didn’t crash at Magny-Cours or maybe Estoril. After the crash, I had a big injury and missed two races: France and Italy. When I came back to Aragon, I kept fighting for the world title. If I didn’t come back at Aragon, I think we’d lose the title. It’s not been an easy three or four weeks after the injury. I went to Austria for the Red Bull Athlete Performance Center, and I kept working to come back quickly. Sometimes we’re lucky, sometimes we’re not. When I crashed in France, I learnt things. If we’re fighting for the world title next year, if we have a big gap, I need to be more careful in the last races.”
His season was eerily similar to the dominant performance from Alvaro Bautista in 2023 where it came down to an end of the season push to secure the top spot. With his job done the battle behind for second between teammate Nicolo Bulega and Alvaro Bautista is also over. Bulega holds a 96 point lead and the final two races of the season are a formality at this point.
Race 1 Results from Jerez