IN
THE
WIND
P34
TORRES AND HASLAM TAKE THE QATARI GOLD
L
ast year in the Qatari night-
time a remarkable double win
gave Aprilia almost a surprise
world title to add to its long list of
previous World Superbike high
points.
This year Aprilia scored anoth-
er kind of double—arguably an
even more surprising one—but
they relied on two different rid-
ers to do it at the World Super-
bike final at Qatar, October 17.
After being so fast in practice,
and even after being only sixth
in Superpole, Aprilia Racing
Team—Red Devils rider Jordi
Torres was maybe not that much
of a surprise race-one winner.
His pace had been obvious from
the outset of the weekend. He
had to fight off the attentions of
the new world champion, Jona-
than Rea, for his win, however.
Even without his favored SC2
front tire in the allocation at this
round, Rea had been fast all
throughout the weekend and
looked more than capable of
challenging Torres all the way,
even after the Spanish rider had
come through the pack from
sixth at a remarkable pace.
It was a brilliantly tense and
eventful race.
A classic late fight to the line
saw Rea even try to pass out-
side the Aprilia rider only to run
wide and then finish 0.726-sec-
onds back, with Torres becom-
ing the first non-British rider to
win in 2015.
"In race one the bike just
worked well but we tried to
make a different setting in race
two, because in the end of the
Leon Haslam
took a popular
race two victory
at the World Su-
perbike finale.
