IN
THE
WIND
P52
REA, SYKES SPLIT ASSEN
WORLDSBK WINS
A
ll the top riders in the WorldS-
BK Championship said that
it would take until the end of the
April 21-22 Assen WorldSBK
Championship race weekend
for any meaningful trends in the
championship to surface.
After Jonathan Rea (KRT) had
shown great pace and purpose
to win race one in strangely warm
and sunny Netherlands, and even
though his teammate Tom Sykes
had similar pace then, the sec-
ond race would at least be a real
fight between those two guys. On
paper.
It was, however, a clear and
very welcome win for Sykes in
race two, as Rea simply did not
have the pace to stay with a clas-
sic runaway ride from Sykes.
Rea took his personal Assen
win tally to the same magic level
of 12 that Carl Fogarty exhibited in
his glory years.
Rea is now only two wins shy
of equaling Fogarty's all-time win
total of 59, but his 58th will have
to wait for now, as Sykes added
his name to Marco Melandri (2),
Rea (3) and Chaz Davies (2) in the
2018 race-winning stable. Sykes
had been fourth on day one.
The vocally and locally sup-
ported Michael van der Mark
(Pata Yamaha Official WorldSBK)
pushed on with his plans to win
his first-ever race in WorldSBK,
but he fell short by less than a
second in race one, more heftily
displaced by 7.507 seconds in the
second 21-lap festival of the sun
kings at Assen.
Chaz Davies (Aruba.it Racing –
Ducati) added his illustrious name
to the race-one podium after a
strong and gutsy ride through to
the front, at a circuit that cannot
Tom Sykes capped off the Assen
round of the WorldSBK Series with
a well-earned win.
