Troy Bayliss topped Valentino Rossi and Nicky Hayden in the Ducati Diavel drag race at WDW 2012.

Australia’s retired triple Superbike World Champion Troy Bayliss has claimed a famous victory over Valentino Rossi and Nicky Hayden at World Ducati Week in Italy.

Of the four days of track action, Saturday’s Drag Race by Tudor is sure to go down in WDW history as one of the most exciting and close-fought competitions yet.

Bayliss, Rossi, Hayden, Carlos Checa, Jakub Smrz, Sylvain Guintoli, Niccolò Canepa and Lorenzo Zanetti all enjoyed some friendly, but fierce competition on the drag-strip along the Misano start straight – aboard Ducati Diavels!

The early elimination stages of the competition saw Ducatisti favourites Rossi and Bayliss go through to the exclusive final show-down in front of a huge WDW evening crowd.

Bayliss got the best launch from his Diavel and tripped the timing lights at 6.306 seconds to win the magnificent Drag Race by Tudor by just 0.023 of a second ahead of Rossi with Hayden third and Checa fourth.

As the seventh edition of World Ducati Week comes to a close, an incredibly successful event broke all previous WDW records.

Held at the World Misano Circuit in Italy, the massive WDW2012 gathering, entitled The Planet of the Champions, ran from Thursday to Sunday, 21-24 June and attracted thousands of passionate Ducati owners from all over the world.

With an incredible 65,000 visitors over four days, WDW2012 has been the biggest ever. Approximately 30 percent were international visitors from the likes of USA, Europe, Australia, Russia, India, Brazil, China and Malaysia.