WORLD SUPERBIKE CHAMPIONSHIP
VOL. 51 ISSUE 15 APRIL 15, 2014 P85
warm when he went back to his
garage for race two.
Behind the scrapping leaders,
Chaz Davies' magic Aragon spell
was broken by a fourth place af-
ter his teammate Giugliano fell off
on the last lap. A good result but
15 seconds down he was far from
happy with it, or the feeling from his
bike relative to a bright Saturday.
He was one of many fallers in
race two – Alex Lowes, Claudio
Corti, Jeremy Guarnoni – and
only 20 riders of the 27 who qual-
ified finished each race.
The Bimotas of Ayrton Bado-
vini and Christian Iddon raced as
phantoms, in that they were there
in flesh and metal. But as soon as
they crossed the line they were
excluded, as the BB3 is not yet
homologated. So they can race,
but you never see them except
as footnotes in the results, with
STH (Subject To Homologation)
next to their names.
They were right on the pace
of the top Evo bikes, or at least
Briefly...
be cleared to ride at Aragon before
they could take to the track. The only
one who didn't make it was Sylvain
Barrier, who was injured in a car ac-
cident in Europe after Phillip Island.
All the others - Michel Fabrizio, Luca
Scassa, Alex Lowes, Toni Elias, Pe-
ter Sebestyen and Geoff May - were
all declared fit enough to make up a
27-rider World Superbike field at Ara-
gon.
Aussie Bryan Staring and his Ri-
vamoto Honda World Supersport
team parted company shortly before
the Aragon race weekend after they
each experienced difficulty finding
the funds to keep them going. Riva-
moto pulled out of the race weekend
all together, but Staring was in Ara-
gon looking for a ride, and hoping to
have gotten one at the World Endur-
ance Championship race at the Bold
D'Or, the weekend following Aragon.
With Bimota very much present in
the metallic flesh but phantoms in
the results sheets, one of the numer-
ous questions to be asked was is
there now nine different manufactur-
ers in the World Superbike Champi-
onship? Or 8.5 or really only eight?
The 'regulatory' status of the Bimota
pairing of Ayrton Badovini and Chris-
tian Iddon is probably 'phantom,' but
is also intriguing because both of
these invisible bikes made it into Su-
perpole One, keeping out full points
scoring riders and dropping them
down the starting order on the grid.
Leon Camier came, saw and kicked
butt in the SBK Evo class his first
Davide Giugliano ran into
Jonathan Rea in the first race.
Giugliano crashed, but Rea
stayed upright.
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