VOL. 50 ISSUE 26 JULY 2, 2013
P91
Briefly...
SYKES
THE REDEEMER
Tom Sykes is double the trouble
for his rivals in Imola
BY GORDON RITCHIE
PHOTOGRAPHY BY GOLD & GOOSE
F
or Kawasaki's Tom Sykes
a World Superbike double
is not a new thing in his
career but it is a recent kind of
thing, as he scored for himself a
second double in the last three
races at Imola - to not only get
closer to previous championship leader Sylvain Guintoli, but
to surpass him at the top of the
point standings with a second
dominant performance on the
day. He led every lap of race
one and almost every lap of
race two.
He won by seven seconds in
the opening contest and five in
the second race, but that was
only the finale. Superpole was
his too, and with a new track record to boot. And all done on a
race tire - just to rub it in a bit
more. It was his sixth Superpole
win in a row.
He set a new lap record in
race one, a 1:47.272 that was
only .3 of a second from the outright best, but of course set during an actual race. Sykes also
joined the double-digit club at
Imola, by taking his 10th career
World Superbike victory - five of
them this year and four as part
of double wins.
And he did it all in hot and
sticky conditions and with a rising track temperature under his
tires that reached over 122 degrees - a recipe for burned of-
Forty three time race winner Noriyuki Haga, looking more fit and
lean than he maybe ever did when
riding in World Superbike full time,
rode the second Grillini Dentalmatic BMW at Imola, but had little luck
in qualifying. "The bike was good at
a test in Mugello two weeks ago"
Haga said on Friday. "We started
with last year's model and that bike
was already competitive. I found
some good feedback, but for sure
I have to fix something for suspension setting but engine and chassis
were already a good base."
Saturday delivered a change for engine and gearbox to one of Michel
Fabrizio's engines from 2012, with
maybe 10 horsepower more than
the one he had used in the first session on Friday. He was 15th and last
in race one and two, and at least 1
minute and 25 seconds behind the
leaders each time.
The most remarkable thing about
the fourth-place qualifying display
on day one for Ayrton Badovini
was not that he did it on an official
Ducati Alstare, but that he did it on
a bike with a 52mm air intake restrictor still fitted - not a free-breathing engine as allowed by regulation
from this race on. It was simply a
case of running engines to the end
of their planned life before breaking
out the new ones, which were used
on Saturday.
David Salom was out of the Imola
World Supersport round before
it started, his hand injury proving
more troublesome than he thought.
Florian Marino replaced him again
and there are plans in place to at
least try to get three bikes on the
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