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us. The front tire did not seem so suitable in the second race, for us at least. I had a good start in both races, but Iwas not able to keep positions. This is only the first race, so I look forward to the next tests." In the 18-lap sprint second race, Kagayama and Corser had a tough race with each other in the early laps, chasing the hard-starting Pitt, but as time wore on, Kagayama passed five-lap leader Corser and extended his advantage to finish ahead of not Corser but the seriously determined Laconi by over two seconds. Corser, on a different choice of a harder rear Pirelli tire than the other top runners, was third and maybe thinking that it was a bad idea to change tires, despite his usual great feel for these things. A wonderful fight for fourth place, which featured eight riders at one stage, went the way of Winston Ten Kate Honda rider Chris Vermeulen, making him the best Honda finisher on the first day of the new season. "You had little time to get ready for the second part of the race," Laconi said. "I gave everything I had in race one, and in the second one I tried to make up time immediately. I made a good opener for Ducati, but it is very hard to finish second in the race but be credited with third. The regulations are like that, but it is good to be on the podium in the first race. These two guys are very fast so we must try something to be very fast. I tried to catch Yukio in the final laps, but it wasn't easy, and when I saw it was easy to slide, I told myself to just ride and settle for second - and that's what I did. I did the best that I could do today, and it was important for me to start the championship with two results, unlike last year, and get my season off to a good start." Even the rains at Losail were seen as something of a novel happening, it not having rained on three consecutive days for some time in this region. The return of the rains on race day caused the first race to be held in two parts. With 10 laps completed, the slowly degrading wet track surface and a bit of an off-track excursion from Laconi brought out the red flags, stopping the contest on safety grounds. Corser had had a couple of moments at that time, and he was about to have his biggest one for four years when the flag dropped at the end of an eight lap second leg. The race was determined on aggregate time, and clear first-section leader Corser only had to keep a safe gap behind second-leg leader Kagayama to take the win. Kagayama was an aggregate second, with Ducati rider, Laconi, third. "It's very special for me, but also for Francis and Patricia [Bana], because it has been a long time [since we all won]," Corser said. "It's good for the whole Alstare Corona Extra team. A few laps before I put my hand up and they red flagged it, it was actually raining in some corners and not in others, so we kept going as long as we could before it started getting a bit slippery. If it started raining on the start-finish then it was raining everywhere else on the track, so when I came into turn one it locked up the front, had to let go of the brakes, and ran wide, so fortunately enough they stopped the race. Regis [Laconi] was a bit lucky after firing off into the gravel, but it was lucky that the runoff was so far away, thanks to the fact that this track is up to the safety standards. I couldn't see my lapboard on the run down the straights, so I wasn't sure if we had done enough laps for the race to be declared a result. We changed the bike for the second race and changed the ti re and it didn't seem to hook up as well for the first one, so when I saw Yukio off in front, I thought that this was great for the team. t didn't have to win, just finish here and let Regis and Yukio battle it out for second." Behind, testing struggler but Sunday morning's man par excellence Yamaha Motor ltalia's Andrew Pitt was glad to see the rain, because - as his slow slip from the leading bunch in race two testified - his front end was good for no more than a handful of laps. He was another on a new venture, in World Superbike for the first time. "Race one was good for the result, but in race two my front tire felt like it was finished too early," Pitt said. "I fought as hard as I could to keep other riders behind me, but I had a couple of big front-end pushes and I really didn't want to crash. The speed of the bike is not too bad, pretty much on par with most other bikes." Behind was Noriyuki Haga, his teammate who stormed to fifth in the twoparter but was still way off form and lacking setup time in the fully dry race two. "So far, so good, but we have some small setup difficulties," Haga said. 'The rain interfering in race one was good for "The bike was so much better in race two," Vermeulen said. "We changed the rear suspension to try and get the front working a bit better because we are still getting used to the new front fork. As race two went on, I just got more and more comfortable. With a couple of more laps, I could have been on the podium, and with more time to test properly, who knows." He was almost usurped at the end by veteran rider Klaffi Honda's PierFrancesco Chili, recovering from a race one nonstart in fine style but succumbing to racer's arm pump in the final laps. "In the last two or three laps of race two, I had a drop in power from my braking arm, or for sure I would have caught Troy," Chili said. '" have finished my bocIy! In the last laps, I made a mistake three times, so I told myself to relax and finish the race." He was, in turn, almost usurped by his own teammate, Superbike rookie Max Neukirchner, who was in his first and CYCLE NEWS • MARCH 9, 2005 2S