nUTiquki lIaga and TTUq CUTseT split wins in UK
By
GORDON RITCHIE
rid Superbike has
been a magnet for riders young and old in
recent years, but this
time around, and for
the second race in succession, it was seasoned competitors Troy Corser and
Noriyuki Haga who scampered off to
record a win apiece, in the same order as
at Brno. Around the often-risky topography, the two family men put all thoughts
of personal safety aside and went at it
with elbows and block-passing techniques well to the fore, fighting for every
inch sometimes, around the sublime
Brands tarmac. Shame about the ridiculously close walls ringing around it, but
Brands, with a big crowd and sun shining
above, is the epitome of all that is good
about World Superbike. The event
claimed 108,00 spectators all weekend
and saw lots on Sunday, far less on Friday
and Saturday. But only two weeks after
Donington's MotoGP race, Brands was at
least as busy as expected.
The racing was sometimes risk laden
and oft of the no-quarter variety, especially from Haga.
Make no mistake, there may have been
only two men in it at the end, but we
watched two astonishingly close and
competitive contests between the Aussie
and Japanese aces. Haga made the difference between race one and race two by
changing machine settings and being even
more aggressive in the
early laps, setting a
race time even
faster than the
first 2S-lapper,
by some six
seconds.
16 AUGUST 17,2005 • CYCLE NEWS
RACE ONE
In race one, Corser hammered out to the
front of the pack from pole and looked
like he might perform one his occasional
disappearing acts. But Haga had other
plans, sticking with him to eventually
join in a classic
spectacle around
the undulating
2.6-mile circuit.
PHOTOS BY GOLD
&
GooSE
Just behind, Ducati Xerox's Regis Laconi
closed up an early gap to finish third. A
personal battle for fourth went to Aussie
rider Winston Ten Kate Honda's Chris
Vermeulen on the last lap, as he overcame the best efforts of PSG-I
Kawasaki's Chris Walker. Walker had
been hit on the entrance to Paddock Hill
in consecutive occasions and reckoned he could have scored a
o
