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Superbike World Championship Round 9: Brands Hatch ~[IfJ[J)@{j'[J)@O@ REYNOLDS RAINS IN HIS OWN DOMAIN the first race because Emmett made a jump start and came flying past me. He just wanted to get himself on TV. I had to use my second bike and had problem with my front brake. The bike wasn't as good because we had done no testing on it this weekend. I was catching Toseland, but then my tire started to lose some pieces. It was difficult to select a tire because we had no dry practice to do any endurance testing like normal." As stated, he held off his teammate Hodgson in race two, to keep his title dreams alive. By a slender ten points and therefore next to nothing in real terms, but at least we will not have the championship sewn up with a whopping six races remaining and a big five-week gap to think about that fact. Hodgson, even if he was second in race one, was not quite himself, showing signs of strain and just glad to get through the day, or at least the obvious nerves of race one. "That was really tough; I had a lot of people to pass, and I was making stupid mistakes, especially after Ruben went out," said the championelect. "I knew I had good points, and then I saw myoid friend Chris Walker, and I knew the crowd would want to see a good race between us. I had a slight speed advantage, and we were both sliding around a fair bit, which made it good fun. Shakey was so far in front that I thought I'd won. I won't be making any changes for face two. I think you've just got to accept you're going to be sideways." The championship itself looks to be resolved at Assen once more, the fourth big day out for British fans fond of global racing. First was Silverstone SBK, then Donington GP, then Brands and now, on August 7, Assen - a little part of Europe used to hearing the British and Italian national anthems. Expect a big crowd and a party of huge magnitude for Hodgson. Lavilla scored sixth place in an ultimately lonely second race, with Chili seventh, 16 seconds behind Byrne. 16 AUGUST 6, 2003' c u e I e James Toseland (52) matched teammate Walker's finish in race one by coming home third in race two. Alstare Suzuki's Gregorio Lavilla (10) was the first four-cylinder machine to finish race one, landing seventh. Lavilla was sixth in race two. Laconi, Kagayama and Leon Haslam seized the last places in the top ten, with Kagayama maybe just all raced out after his recent travails for Suzuki in three different series. Alessandro Gramigni took advantage of the high attrition rate in front of his Yamaha Rl to sit 11th, ahead of Ellison, Clementi, Marco Borciani and Mauro Sanchini. The races were both costly affairs for the lots of protagonists, with ten nonfinishers in the opener, 12 nonfinishers in the second. Bizarrely, none of the first race casualties fell off, only retired. In race two Walker crashed, De Matteis binned it, Pedersoli fell, and finally Rutter went down. The nine local wildcards gave the championship a boost this weekend in more than just results, and many were left wondering what Brands and so on will be like if the crowd cannot get to see their local heroes take on the world in anything like high numbers from now on. SBK has always created stars from within, as the visitors make a name for themselves against the regulars. Byrne became the latest to write his name across the skies, and at 26 years old he would be a great SBK prospect. With the impressive sideshow of the Brits taken out of the overall equation, the stats are now altered significantly. There have been three double winners now (Hodgson, Xaus and Byrne), five different winners so far, (Hodgson, Xaus, Toseland, Chili and Byrne) and yet another name Reynolds - on the list of Superpole winners. In the World Championship standings, Hodgson leads by 386 points to Xaus' 246. That equates to a gap of 140 points with a possible 150 up for neVIl's The huge complement of British Championship wildcards, nine of them in all, had a predictably strong effect at a damp and gloomy Brands Hatch, with British Superbike regular Rizla Suzuki's John Reynolds taking the Superpole win on what was a largely wet track surface. Like others, Reynolds waited until the track had a good soaking before wandering out to the surface, allowing the grip to be predictable, if lessened. "When I went out, it wasn't as bad as it looked; I was able to get some good grip and drive despite the pouring rain," Reynolds said. "My bike was set up perfectly for the wet, and the Dunlop tires were excellent. I had a golden five minutes on track when I recorded my fastest laps, and the conditions got worse after that. We parked the bike up with 20 minutes to go, and it was the longest 20 minutes of my life. We waited and watched the times and wondered whether I should go out again, but we didn't want to push any harder than we had to get pole position. When the timer ran out, it was a real adrenaline rush to realize I had got my first ever WSB pole." Superpole had been declared "wet" by concerned race organizers even before the first proper rains fell, and thus each of the top 16 Superpole qualifiers was given 50 minutes of track time in which to complete a maximum of 12 laps· with the fastest lap of each rider counting as his lap time for overall grid classification. Those riders who exited Pit Lane relatively early generally had the best of the weather, with the rainfall steadily increasing in pace and intensity until the fmal few minutes of the session. Regulars and wild cards alike put in some outstanding displays of riding on a fully wet track, with some calling for Superpole to be run this way all the time. Second-place man HM Plant Ducati's Chris Walker slid and weaved all the way around the 2.602 mile track, a popular man on UK tarmac as ever. British Championship leader Shane Byrne was third, his time coming toward the end of proceedings, as he gave it his all after qualifying fastest man in the dry. Quick starter Regis La.coni's early best looked to have scored Superpole as the rains built in intensity, but Reynolds was first to overhaul !iim, followed by a fair few other British attackers. Renegade Ducati's Michael Rutter made it three wild cards in the top five at the end of the session, but a series of dramatic laps from Ruben Xaus on a sodden track promoted him to sixth on the grid. ETI Ducati's Sean Emmett and James Toseland finished off the second row. Imperfect timing of his quick laps and some seeming problems with comer exit traction prevented Neil Hodgson from anything higher than II th, but the youngest and oldest riders in the field· wild card Leon Haslam and veteran PSG-1 Ducati's Pierfrancesco Chili - had better fortune, setting ninth and tenth best times respectively. Troy Corser qualified the Petronas FP-l in J 2tb. Yukio Kagayama, so effective at Silverstone, was out of sorts in 17th, James Haydon also missing the cut on the second Petronas. grabs in the remaining three rounds/six races. Or as they say in Lancashire - it's all over bar the shouting. Toseland is third with 227, Laconi fourth on 208 and Lavilla - upholding four-cylinder honor - in fifth with 185. According to raceday rumor, it will be a long and argumentative time before we get to Assen to crown Hodgson, however. First there was a form passed around the press room from "the WSB and WSS teams," a sort of petition (as yet unsigned) which warned of the dire consequences for all of the one-make tire rule and requesting that FGSport reconsider the whole matter. Then there is the real possibility that Dunlop and Michelin will not attend the final three races of the year in protest of the aforesaid tire rule. Now that would spoil the party, even if it would be a remarkable and drastic turn of events should it happen. So Brands was SBK at it best - on track at least - with wild cards, a variety of podium finishers, a big crowd and all the fun of the fair. Assen, however, may be a long time coming, and the road there may be littered with the hopes and dreams of many. Organizers, tire companies, teams or all. But on this day racing once more prevailed when the flag dropped and a new SBK star was made by his own hands. WORLD SUPERSPDRT Stephane Chambon lost a World championship in 2000 while sitting in the pit lane at Brands Hatch, with a broken Alstare Suzuki staring back at him as his title rivals played out a drama unrivalled before or since. Teuchert won the title, Muggeridge the race. Last year Chambon fell at the base of Paddock Hill and was not allowed to restart - injured. Fabien Foret also fell. He was allowed to start, and he came second. He won the Championship. Chambon may have not been racing for the championship for much of this year, and maybe that was the reason that he was allowed to win at Brands again, following his 1999 win at the same venue. He loves the place, and even if it is in England, it is a venue he can seem to go fast at every time out. The Alstare Suzuki rider just ripped his way to an excellent win, easing up in the last laps to finish seven seconds ahead of Yamaha Belgarda rider Jurgen van den Goorbergh. VDG was top Yamaha and top Pirelli runner on the day, satisfaction of some kind - and he just loved Brands Hatch. The people, the place, the whole track layout. Chambon was leading on every lap, but there were dramas of course, there usually are in Supersport, but we were saved the four starts we had