Magny-Cours, France – Kawasaki star Jonathan Rea celebrated his first World Superbike weekend as world champion with a classic double win - his fifth of the season and his first ever race wins at this difficult circuit.
So different were conditions, however, that the two races could have been run at different venues, with streaming rain for Race 1 and a bone-dry track for the second outing.
The only South African rider at Magny-Cours, Capetonian David ‘McFlash’ McFadden, did Suzuki Team Europe and the new GSX-R1000 L5 proud with a solid 16th after a difficult ride.
RACE 1
The new world champion finally passed team-mate and closest rival Tom Sykes, who’d led almost from the start, with less than three laps to go, after Sykes made a mistake at Turn 8 on the 17th lap of a race that had been reduced from 21 to 19 laps because of the atrocious conditions.
Sykes kept it together – and the shiny side up – to come home second, 4.7 seconds in arrears, well clear of local hero Sylvain Guintoli on the Pata Honda, who kept his unbroken run of podium finishes at his home circuit intact with a spirited ride.
Dutch teenager Michael van der Mark on the second Pata Honda got the best of a race-long four-way battle for fourth, followed in very quick succession by Leon Camier (MV Agusta), Ducati Team rider Chaz Davies and Ducati privateer Matteo Baiocco – with Camier’s fifth the best finish yet for the Verghera marquee in World Superbike history.
Alex Lowes (Suzuki) rode a solid race after a huge spill in Superpole on Saturday to claim eighth ahead of Ducati riders Leandro Mercado and Niccolo Canepa.
Aprilia factory rider Leon Haslam, who took Superpole honours in dramatic fashion by setting the fastest time of the session and then crashing out, started strongly but faded, finishing 16th after pitting on lap 12 to change to intermediate tyres.
RACE 2
The dry second race was a cracker, with a race-long three-way battle for the lead between Rea, Davies and Sykes that ended in that order in less than seven seconds.
Rea’s podium tally of 22 put him equal with Troy Bayliss who achieved the feat in 2002, and is the second highest number of podiums in a season in the all-time list.
Davies’ second place, on the other hand, meant that the fight for the runner-up spot in the series would continue to the season finale under floodlights in Qatar on 18 October.
Behind the top three, Van der Mark and Haslam got into their own private duel for fourth with the Dutch rider passing his Aprilia rival five laps from the end to claim the place by less than three seconds.
Guintoli put in another solid ride, pleasing his home fans with sixth, ahead of Canepa and another race long scrap, this one put up by Aprilia works rider Jordi Torres and Ducti Team’s Luca Scassa, which ended in Torres’ favour by less than two seconds, while Lowes, feeling his bruises, rounded out the top 10.
WORLD SUPERSPORTS
The penultimate round of the World Supersport series lasted just three laps before what race direction diplomatically described as a ‘technical problem’ on Kevin Manfredi’s privateer Honda brought a premature halt to proceedings.
Given that it brought out the red flags and a posse of marshals to clean up the circuit, one assumes that as technical problems go, it was a biggie.
Indeed, Manfredi was a notable absentee when the race was restarted as a shortened 11-lapper. So was MV Agusta privateer Alex Baldolini, who’d been dicing with the leaders before the stoppage - also, apparently due to a ‘technical problem’.
What he missed was an epic battle between pole-sitter PJ Jacobsen (Honda) and Kawasaki star Kene Sofuoglu, who eventually settled for a safe second to nail his fourth World Superpsport title.
The remaining podium sport went to local rider Lucas Mahias – albeit nine seconds adrift after dropping back in the closing stages – while Lorenzo Zanetti on a works MV Agusta got the better of a superb dice for fourth with Pata Honda’s Kyle Smith, the two finishing within less than a second.
Honda privateer Kevin Wahr was sixth, nine seconds ahead of Gino Rea, who salvaged seventh despite crashing out of fifth on lap six. Manfredi’s Honda team-mate Martin Cardenas, and Kawasaki privateers Christian Gamarino Marco Faccani completed the top 10.
SUPERSTOCK 1000
Home-circuit hero Jeremy Guarnoni (Yamaha) came out on top at the end of an intense 15-lap, four-way fight for line honours, ahead of Kevin Calia (Aprilia) and Raffaele De Rosa (Ducati), after Riccardo Russo (Yamaha) crashed out of the leading group with two laps to go.
As the battle for line honours raged ahead of them, Aprilia star Lorenzo Savadori and BMW rider Roberto Tamburini decided the championship between them.
Tamburini needed to win to have any chance of taking the title - but that was a big ask, starting from the sixth row of the grid. He sliced through the field, passing his title rival on lap seven, but ran out of laps before he could reel in the leading group. Tamburini eventually finished fifth behind local Yamaha rider Mathieu Gines, while Gaurnoni cruised home eighth, 10 seconds adrift of Fabio Massei (Ducati) and his own Aprilia team-mate Alessandro Andreozzi, the championship firmly in his grasp.