Cycle News

ROUND 9/AUGUST 4, 2013 SILVERSTONE CIRCUIT/SILVERSTONE, ENGLAND WORLD SUPERBIKE P108 WORLD SUPERBIKE CHAMPIONSHIP offer dry track grip. Melandri was also in trouble, 15th off the grid after breaking down in Superpole One; he was ninth in both races. Guintoli was glad it was all over without further incident to his already injured right shoulder. "I was struggling with the shoulder and with conditions like this," Guintoli said. "I do not like them any more. When you are an outsider - like you can see today, the outsiders win in these condi- tions. Everybody in the top championship places was feeling the pressure today. Tom [Sykes] was feeling it, Marco [Melandri] was. Eugene [Laverty] had to take some risks because he had quite a few points deficit, but he did his job perfectly. I am just happy it is finished. The last time I had this feeling was after the only endurance race I have ever did [sic]. It is nice to do it, but it is nice when it is finished." Sykes was just as frustrated at LAVERTY – EVENTUALLY Eugene Laverty won his first Superpole on Saturday. A bizarre Superpole saw Tom Sykes and Loris Baz smash the existing track record in Superpole Three, Sykes by a huge margin with a 2:03.362, but after a sudden fall of rain the session was not just signaled as wet, but also red-flagged. They called it as a canceled session and thus these "record" times will not stand in the record books. Sykes, and everybody else it appeared, was not best pleased – even if the letter of the law had been upheld. Even eventual Superpole winner Eugene Laverty acknowledged that the 20-minute wet session that eventually comprised Superpole Three should never really have happened. In the restarted "wet" Superpole (with everyone on slicks), but with a white flag coming out soon after the start, Baz was quickest out of the blocks, setting a 2:05.105. Oil flags and crossed white-and-red flags soon came out, however, as Sykes could be seen lapping and shaking his head, as the rains came heavier and prevented him from going faster. In another bizarre twist, Sylvain Guintoli broke down on his fast early lap and he was dropped back to eighth, one place behind Sykes and next to his another chance of double win on English soil, like at Donington, going to waste, as his engine had at the previous Russian round. "It is a bit frustrating, but that is the way championships go," Sykes said. "In dry conditions we could have been at the sharp end in Russia and here because we have a good dry setting. Unfortunately, with the setting we have on the bike, when the rains came we were not able to put the suspension in the same part of the stroke championship rival on the starting grid for the second race in a row. Or so it seemed. The front row remained Baz, Jonathan Rea and Leon Camier until the rains had disappeared and even after some people had started shaking hands in congratulation for front-row starting places, with a few minutes left people started to make for the track again. They were right to, and eventually Laverty won a "wet" Superpole with a dry time of 2:04.730. Carlos Checa was second and Rea third. Almost lost in the clutter and controversy of the whole four/three part Superpole was that this was Laverty's first such win in 69 previous attempts at individual rounds and after 21 front-row starts of another value. "I have been waiting for my first Tissot-Superpole for so long," Laverty said. "After so many front-row starts it was about time. I'm quite pleased. I'm sure we were also a bit lucky, but that's the way it goes." Tom Sykes, robbed of a new track best and a brilliant Superpole win, was livid. "If those are the rules then that's what happens, but at least we got back to the second row and not the third. Wet Superpole? I am not very sure about that. If it was wet how can you have the pole guy do a 2:04.7 lap?"

• Cover