Cycle News - Archive Issues - 2000's

I WORLD SUPERBIKE Round 8 I July 30, 2004 ~ Stevie Three and Ea5Y This was another surprise, although the sight of the winning rider was the third look we've had at the blue-andyellow colors topping the pre-race order, Startingfrom a statusof ninthfastest qualifier, DFX Ducati's Steve Martin shook up the Superpoleorder by posting the best time of the weekend, a I :27.2 13, and then holding on asno fewer than eight riders failed to improve on his mark. The ltalianbased Aussie, alreadytwice a Superpole winner in 2004, has been in fine form sincehisrecovery from midsea- out. I've had a disappointing weekend at Silverstone and a disappoi nt ing one at Brands Hatch . I can o nly apo logize and say I've given I 10 percent all we ekend . Sorry to everyone who came to see a British winner; that was down to me. Let's get it over w ith and move on to the next round ." Chili, sick of sitting behind Laconi, ripped to the lead on t he entrance to Paddock on lap 19 but crashed spectacularly on the exit of Surtees corner, losing the back and experiencing a highly destructive highside . Down to two, the batt le for the lead in what was an excellent contest throughout became, if anything, more desperate, and Haga made the final pass at some unseen place around the sweep that comprises Sheene Curve and the entrance to Stirlings. Staying tight, Laconi had little choice but to go around the outs ide and lost the chance at his sixth w in of the year. Martin, on his own after Vermeulen had slowed somewhat, was th ird , a welcome podium for the three-t ime Superpole winner. Corser had slowed on lap 23, leaving Vermeulen free and easy in fourt h. Elision's amazing sixth came ahead of Toseland, with Craig Coxhell eight h and Chris Walker ninth. The top 10 included Pedercini's Gianluca Nannelli (its last member) , Marco Borciani , Giovanni Bussei, Lucio Pedercini, Ivan Clementi and Piergiorgio Bontempi, making for a solid Apennine way of Italian points collecting. Leon Haslam, a race winner at Brands, fell on the second-to-last lap, Former GP race winner Garry McCoy, an earl ier faller, had another unhappy ou ting. RACE TWO The second race was no less dramatic: Th is tim e the two-parter had some peculiar results bolted on as well. The final order of Haga, Chil i and Vermeulen on the podium was no surprise, w ith Chil i 22 AUGUST 11 , 2004 • distraught at realizing he had not beaten Haga by enough to claim the win on corrected t ime, losing by o nly 0.960 seco nds. Vermeu len, often in trouble in qualifying, was third by 10 seconds, but the fourth-place finish by Chris Walke r really pepped up an already overexcited crowd , happy to see all thei r favorite foreigners (C hili and Haga) so well placed . The Petronas effort had a disastrous Laguna outing, and even though Corser appeared to be to blame for taking out Toseland on the first restarted lap, Walker got the better of an aggressive and assured Ellison to take fourth. " You can never be too sure, but I am pretty co nfident 1would have been on the podium if the second race hadn't been stopped," Corser said. " T he bike and the engine were feeling good. At the restart, I was on the outside with nowhere to go when there was a domino effect at the second corner, There was nothing James or I could do about it. We were both in the corner and we came together. In the first race, I was lining up Vermeulen with a couple of laps to go to see where I could take him , as I was quicker through Dingle Dell , but it would have been difficult. O ur bike was really not t hat m uch slower than the others, and I could almost run with the leaders, as I was maki ng around half a second up through the back section. There was a slight water leak for the last coup le of laps, so I had to back off slight- Iy." "Those were the best rides of the season from both riders," team owner Carl Fogarty said , " Chris had an awesome second race and didn't put a foot wrong as he was under pressure all the way through. For Troy to be two seconds off the lead w ith two laps to go in the first race shows how far we have come in such a short space of time , Troy was also perfectly placed at the start of race two before it was red -nagged and restarted . He didn't get off the line for the restart very well, because the starter kept them wa iting for CYCLE NEWS son injury, looking good for a podium finish to add to his earlier top-flight successes this season. Ducati Fila's Regis Laconiwas the fastest man in regulation qualifying Despite a fall in . the morning session, the Frenchman ended up in a good post-Superpoleposition of third , just behind his early-season bete noir, PSG-I Ducatl's Pier-Francesco Chili, who himselfnarrowly missed out on beatingMartin in Superpole. The front row for Saturday's race was completed by Noriyuki Haga's Renegade Kojl Ducati 999, asthe japanese rider was once more Impressive almost throughout qualifying. He hasalsohad the advantage of racing at Brandsthis year, in a British Championship round. Petronas' Troy Corser made his mark in fifth place, a good result for the uniquethreecylinder machine, with Martin's teammate Marco Borciani sixth. Difficulty in settinggood qualifyingtimes kept the otherwise competitive Chris Vermeulen down in seventh. The evened-out effect of the single-tire rules in Superbike 2004 were best illustrated by the performance of Pedercini Ducatl's Gianluca Nannelli's riding a 2-year-old machine to eighth place in Superpoleafter an astounding fourth in regulation qualifying . Wild -card rider james Ellisonmade a marked improvement in his position from regulation qualifying; havingstarted Superpole in 16th place, he ended his flying lap in ninth. A BSB regular, Ellisonwas one of the success stories of the previous SBKrace in Britain this season, at Silverstone. Championship leaderjames Toseland slippedand slithered to 12th on the grid, with Petronas' Chris Walker in 13th. Luckless Giovanni Bussei went from 10th in regulation to 16th, ashis machinedid not finish the Superpolelap. Garry McCoy had one of his disasterdays again and failed to make the Superpole cut. so long. Maybe he was tryi ng too hard to make it up in the first bend when he came together with James Toseland. It was one of those racing incidents. The way that race panned out, he could well have been on the podium, which would have been incredible. The result was great for Chris and for the team . Finally, we have had a good British round, and everyone w ill now go into the summer break on a high and looking forward to the progress that we know we can still make with the FPI for the rest of this season and beyond ." Ellison was a reve lation, as he was at Silverstone, the British Championship's top privateer proving to be almost the World Superbike equivalent. A saving jo b for many of race one 's casualties saw Bussei a brilliant sixth on a Dec Cecco Ducati 998RS, and McCoy on a rescue mission in seventh . Aussie privateer in the Unit ed Kingdom Craig Coxhell ran out eighth again, ahead of a prominent wild card with 200S SBK ambitions , Sebastien Gimbert from France, on a Yamaha France YZF-R I. Mauro Sanchin i, Ivan Clementi , Bontemp i , Sergio Fuertes , A lessio Vel ini and Miguel Pra ia rounded out the finishers and the top 15. A whoppi ng I I r iders did not finish the race ; one of them , Mrkyvka, did not st art after a r ace-one crash . 40th Anniversary W ith the champ ionship now tighter than a submarine's main hatch, the Brands round satisfied all in attendance and those in front of the Tv. Powerslides , out-ofcontrol bikes , overheating tires on 45degress Celsius tarmac , overaggressive and speculative passing moves, Brands was a heady mix of evenly matched com pet itors and bikes originally designed for the road . Even with Haga winn ing both races, it didn 't seem to matter that the lap times were slower and the lap record remained unmolested . Business as usual - the new usual. WORLD S U P E RS P O RT The short story goessomethinglike this: In a day of rider injuries and disruptions, the first aggregate race proved to be Supersport. Ten Kate Honda's Karl Muggeridge attacked on the last lap to snatch a seemingly sure w in from Klaffi Honda's Sebastien Charpentier after stalking the Frenchman for the entire two-part race . The race was originally halted when Yamaha ltalia's Fabien Foret crashed out and was r un over by two other r iders, Kevin Curtain and Ten Kate Honda's Broc Parkes , with Foret suffering a broken left ankle and what was feared at first to be a fractured femur. It transpired to be me re ly badly bru ised and contused - a lucky th ing, considering

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