WORLD SUPERBIKE CHAMPIONSHIP
VOL. 51 ISSUE 23 JUNE 10, 2014 P99
be a steaming hot 10-lapper, not
the 16-lapper as it was scheduled
to be. Claudio Corti's MV Agusta
had blown oil out, coating the
track, which soon caught fire, as
he had to get off track to have the
flames extinguished.
On the shortened restart Elias
led over the stripe for the first
time but then Guintoli led every
lap after except the final one,
when Melandri squeezed past.
"We had a good pace and
the bike worked straight away,"
Guintoli said. "I was probably the
fastest over one lap, which I was
Briefly...
at the now defunct Shah Alam (1990
and 1991) and Johor Baru (1992 and
1993). Johor still runs smaller events
and track days, but Shah Alam has
now been redeveloped.
The woes of the Hero EBR team
are well known by now as they have
found a lack of pace allied to a lack
of reliability. Geoff May now has only
two of his eight allowable 'active en-
gines' left after five rounds - before
he even got to Malaysia. Talk at Ma-
laysia was of allowing EBR more en-
gines to get them to the end of the
year, as Suzuki needed in MotoGP
some years ago. This idea shouldn't
meet too much opposition, especial-
ly as the EBR1190RX's performance
potential was still so low in relation to
the top teams.
Mick Doohan was a surprise arrival
at Sepang, having been invited up
by the Sepang International Circuit
to help promote their first ever World
Superbike event. He joined the top
riders at the official pre-event visit to
the Petronas twin towers. The five-
time 500c World Champion was
an early race winner in the nascent
World Superbike Championship, but
never in Malaysia. Doohan made
four World Superbike wild-card race
starts on a Yamaha OW01 in the first
year of 1998 and won three of them
– one at Sugo in Japan and two at
Oran Park in Australia.
The first-ever Sepang World Super-
bike race kicked off with a visit to
the famous Petronas Twin Towers,
in the center of Kuala Lumpur. One
rider from each top team, plus as-
sociated media, made the journey
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