VOL. 51 ISSUE 44 NOVEMBER 4, 2014 P35
Briefly...
The late schedule of the opening day
at Losail almost got even later except
for a swiftly completed restart of the
second World Supersport practice
on Friday. Florian Marino's fall
brought out the red flags with five
minutes left, but it did not delay the
start to the third and final Superbike
qualifying session.
The schedule at Losail was a diffi-
cult enough one for the riders to deal
with but in a repeat of the Laguna
methodology the first three 'free'
practice sessions that count towards
qualifying were all completed on Fri-
day. The bottom riders behind 20th
then knew their grid fate for an entire
day. That left just a 30-minute true
free qualifying session on Saturday,
followed by Superpole 1 and 2.
High Friday night drama occurred
when Jonathan Rea's bike quit
on him as he exited pit lane, and he
and his mechanics ran and pushed
his machine back to their pit garage
at full pelt. He felt that his battery
had just died and in the effort to re-
move it a screwdriver went through
the side of the lightweight unit and
punctured one of the cells. Smoke
began to come out of the hole like a
mini jet engine and a quick-thinking
mechanic placed it on pit lane. After
a fire blanket was thrown on it and
some CO2 fire extinguishers placed
on it, it was removed to a safer place,
for fear it may go pop.
The first Superpole session was red
flagged, with basically no time left,
after Sylvain Barrier suffered a gi-
gantic highside. "Through one turn,
my bike lost traction at the rear and I
found myself catapulted into the air,"
understated Barrier, who broke his
continued on next page
A very happy Sylvain
Guintoli and team
celebrated the
frenchman's first
World Superbike
Championship at the
season finale in Qatar.
BY GORDON RITCHIE
PHOTOGRAPHY BY GOLD & GOOSE
W
hen the story of the 2014 season is remembered many
years from now it will be of a fight between Aprilia and
Kawasaki riders for the most part, and finally a battle be-
tween Kawasaki's Tom Sykes and Aprilia's Sylvain Guintoli.
It will contain theatrical villains like team orders, teammates
crashing into each other at inopportune moments and the atten-
dant bad blood that follows.
