Cycle News is a weekly magazine that covers all aspects of motorcycling including Supercross, Motocross and MotoGP as well as new motorcycles
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WORLD SUPERBIKE WORLD SUPERBIKE CHAMPIONSHIP ROUND 2/APRIL 13, 2014 MOTORLAND ARAGON/ARAGON, SPAIN P84 He was finally third, after Sykes and Baz cut inside to make sure of their second 1-2 finish of the day. Melandri slipped back to 11th in race one, his 'A' choice rear not doing what he hoped it would, ru- ining his first race. "It's a shame that we basi- cally wasted race one," said Me- landri. "From the very first laps I was struggling and wasn't able to keep my pace. In the second race I overtook Baz and at that point, with the win within a shout, my DNA pushed me to make a go of it even if maybe I was a little too far behind Sykes. Unfortunately I went wide and finished third, but I had to prove that I could win and I will take that confidence with me to Assen to get my first win of the season." The Kawasaki has always been a class act in the past couple of seasons in World Superbike rac- ing, but with the entire KRT Super- bike team now ticking along like a timepiece balanced by two large pendulums in each side of the ga- rage, there has never been sweet- er to wear a green set of leathers. Even the team's SBK Evo rid- er, David Salom, won the sec- ond Evo race of the day when by rights he should have had his much inured right hand in an ice bucket during his home round. Instead, he had it hard against the throttle stops as race one Evo winner Leon Camier (BMW Mo- torrad Italia EVO) ran on once too often after having difficulty back- shifting, and Salom took not only top Evo place but 10th overall. The new look race day hap- pened in a whirl, with the first race at 10:30 a.m., the World Superbike race at 11:40 and then the last Superbike race at 1:10 p.m. The races are shorter in 2014 than last year, 17 laps for the Superbikes in Aragon, but Sykes joked that the gap between rac- es was so short his bike was still ISOLATIONISM No man is an Island but in terms of location for a Grand Prix and World Superbike racetrack, Motorland Aragon may well be. This brilliant three-mile-plus circuit and multi-discipline motorsports facility gleams like a jewel in the desert in sunny weather, with the magnificently appointed and well planned layout providing slow, medium and fast chal- lenges to every rider and every machine. For the World Superbike crews the little extra nipple of tarmac that protrudes away from the finish line, at the end of the back straight, makes the drag race even longer than in GP mode, and more of an engine torturer. It is not evident in MotoGP guise, as they use a wider, shorter corner to get back to the start-finish line. This was designed to not allow too much comparison of Mo- toGP and World Superbike - particularly in terms of the rival Bridgestone and Pirelli control tires. There is still a lot of work for Spanish-based Dorna to do to get the fans in from Barcelona for World Super- bike races at Motorland, especially now that they have decided to start the races much earlier than before. Phillip Island insisted on a 12 p.m. start to race one for this reason, allowing Melbourne-based bikers to get there in time without getting up before they went to bed on Saturday night. With Aragon around a 2.5-hour trek from Barcelona you would have to clear the edge of town at around 7:30 a.m. to make sure you catch the start of the first World Superbike race with some minutes to spare. Good luck with that when people often only sit down to eat at 11 or midnight in some parts of Catalunya. The claimed weekend crowd was 22,255. Aragon is a long way from most anywhere except the old town of Alcaniz, where they used to have road races around the narrow and seemingly medieval streets. So the local passion for petrol and all its various light hydro- carbon cousins is evident, but a well of potential specta- tors is not big enough to be drawn from deeply. The Motorland circuit may be a fantastic modern shrine to motorsport, but even in the heat of race week- end action in World Superbike guise, there is no hiding its remoteness for those who cannot afford - or have no time to – to travel so far to see a bike race series that MotoGP-centric Spain in general has turned its nose up at for over 25 years. Due to its remote location, Aragon has a difficult time attracting crowds to its World Superbike weekend.