DAVIES CHANGES THE ABSOLUTE GAME
U
ntil now, and despite the
best attempts from many oth-
ers, the 2016 World Superbike
Championship had been a Ka-
wasaki Racing Team contest, be-
tween runaway leader and reign-
ing champion Jonathan Rea and
his bitter team rival Tom Sykes.
Chaz Davies (Aruba.it Rac-
ing Ducati) and Michael van der
Mark (Honda World Superbike
Team) had been podium pres-
ences but Davies stepped up
big time and rode with his usual
clinical aggression and blinkered
focus to score a remarkable
double victory, at the Aragon
round of the WorldSBK Champi-
onship in Spain, April 2-3, taking
his first wins of 2016, the 10th
and 11th race wins of his career.
In the first race of the week-
end Ducati showed that all the
changes made to their exhausts
and their power output had the
desired effect, as Davies re-
covered from a so-so-start from
the second row to burst into the
lead on lap four, and he romped
away.
He made an easier, more
measured first few laps in race
two, but by his standards only,
as he passed Sykes with ease
and had an unexpectedly larger
margin of victory in race two.
Davies had set a new lap record
of 1:50.421 on race-day one, on
lap three.
After winning ahead of Rea
in race one by 4.1 seconds and
ahead of Sykes by over six sec-
onds in race two, Davies' words
after race one summed up the
progress made by his manufac-
IN
THE
WIND
P20
PHOTOGRAPHY
BY
GOLD
&
GOOSE
Chaz Davies loves Aragon and
positively smoked the best
Superbike riders in the world
this time around.
