World Superbike Championship
Round 8: Misano
(Above) Ben Bostrom (155) picked the perfect time to get hot In the Wortd Superblke Championship -just a few weeks before
his home round at Laguna Seca. Bostrom leads Troy Bayliss (21), Troy Corser (3) ancl the rest of the pack In the first of two
races at Misano.
(Below) Race one tumed Into a battle as Bayliss chased down Bostrom and eventually beat the Califomlan to the flag.
By GORDON RITCHIE
PHOTOS BY GOLD £, GOOSE
MISANO ADRIATICO, ITALY, JUNE 24
ust for a change, Misano offered
us no ·double winner, just a pair of
Kings who played hard in the heat of
an Italian summer afternoon. With
temperatures over 90 degrees on
occasion, the races were verging on
the endurance side of the sport, with
fitness and motivation counting for
almost as much as anything else.
If the latter virtue is the true judge,
then Troy Bayliss and Ben Bostrom
truly deserved their wins, with the
championship's pre-eminent selfbeliever, Colin Edwards, being held
back by what he was to later quote to
be problems getting his big V-twin to
make its Michelins grip the 120degree Misano asphalt just as well as
Troy Bayliss' versions. Or anyone's
really.
"The difficulty we are having is
with this thing here,"' said Edwards,
staring at the temperature chart on
the result sheet. "We can have grip
with the tires up to about 38 degrees
[Celcius] of track temperature. Any
more than that and we have problems. The bike just did the same
thing in the second race as it had in
practice - lost grip."
J
6
JULY 4,2001
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