ROUND 7/JUNE 30, 2013
ENZO/DINO FERRARI CIRCUIT/IMOLA, ITALY
WORLD SUPERBIKE
P96
WORLD SUPERBIKE CHAMPIONSHIP
Eugene Laverty
had an up-anddown weekend.
He was third in
race one, but
crashed out of
race two.
SOFUOGLU CLIMBS
THE MOUNTAIN
If you were Mahi Racing Team
India Kawasaki's Kenan Sofuoglu
the sight of Sam Lowes disappearing off into the distance yet again
would have been hard to take.
After a troubled Friday and lots of
changes on the bike on Saturday,
it looked impossible for the Turkish
rider to think of winning for a time
but Sofuoglu knew he at least could
have a bike he could win on by Sunday morning.
He did have such a bike, and won
on it, but only after Lowes had been
run wide by a near miss with Fabien
Foret, Sofuoglu's teammate, and
lost a lot of ground. He battled back,
at lap record pace of 1:51.607, as
he somehow passed his teammate
Vladimir Leonov.
Sofuoglu ended up four seconds
ahead of Lowes and put it down to
good work over the weekend by his
team and his own need to succeed.
"We had to have two attempts to
win, but we did it," the Turk said. "I really like this track, but normally I have
very bad luck here and Friday proved
to be very difficult. The team worked
very hard to find something for me
and we changed a lot of things on
the bike, even parts, and we had to
set them up again each time, as they
were new. I knew I could have had a
strong pace and I was confident. As
we saw I was really strong enough
to fight and win this race. Everything
was normal today and I am very
happy to win again."
Lowes acknowledges that you
cannot win them all, especially when
you are trying to win a record five in
a row, and he came up one place
short after a brilliant last-chicane
pass on Leonov - a move he had
made on countless others in his
fight back from the lower reaches of
the top 10.
"I mucked up the start a little bit
and got away not that well and at
this track if you make a bad start you
pay for it a lot," said Lowes, who is
still 34 points ahead of Sofuoglu.
"Into the early corners it is a bottle
neck and in the chicane at the top
