World Superbike Champs - Ducati fights back

Regis Laconi and James Toseland took a win apiece for the Ducati Xerox Team in the fifth round of the World Superbike championship in front of a 70,000 strong crowd at the Silverstone circuit. Frenchman Laconi scored his ninth career triumph and Ducati’s first win of the year when he took the chequered flag in race one, but it was Toseland who really set the home fans alight with a controlled but aggressive display of riding in race 2 to seal the reigning champion’s first win of the year. In the pointscore though, runaway championship leader Troy Corser on the Suzuki GSXR1000R finished second in both races, extending his lead to 78 points – more than three clear race wins.

For Ducati, the event was enormously face-saving and has moved the team’s two riders into fourth and fifth on the standings and re-established Ducati as a serious superbike contender, at least as much as any other manufacturer can be given Suzuki’s withering form this year. Corser finished second in both races with a total losing margin for the day of 0.569 seconds – in both races the wiley Aussie would have known as he crossed the line that his championship points margin was growing.

Perhaps the most disappointing aspect of the day was the performance of Yukio Kagayama who had snared superpole and was very familiar with the shorter Silverstone Circuit in which he had competed successfully in the British Superbike Championships. Given the above, it was an opportunity for him to show some form and put some pressure on his Suzuki team-mate but a crash in the first race and a lacklustre showing in the second saw him leave the event with a gap of just three points to third placed championship contender Chris Vermeulen.

More disappointing than Kagayama was the choice of circuit. After last year’s high-speed thriller around the one of the fastest circuits in the world, the organisers chose to run two 28 lap races of the shorter 3.561 km (2.213 miles) International Circuit, used in the popular British Superbike championship. The main change was that instead of powering down Hangar Straight towards Stowe, the riders veered off at Becketts and headed directly for Abbey before completing the rest of the considerably shorter airfield layout.

The highest point scorer on the day was reigning champ Toseland, who took advantage of his home circuit, local knowledge and a well set-up Duke to wrestle a third and a first from the two races.

“Its always nice to win especially with the tough start to this season, but as I said after the first race, I never give up” declared James. “The team has worked fantastically well, thanks to Davide Tardozzi and Paolo Ciabatti for all the work they’ve done with me. We made a slight change from first race to second race and it was worth half a second a lap faster, the difference between finishing third and first, but it was a long race and seeing L18 after about 45 minutes is really tough!

“I did it the hard way again, letting them get away at the start and having to chip away but once I’d got on the tail, it was difficult with Nori and Troy and it took me quite a few laps to get by. I’ve never won before at Silverstone and that was one of my goals in life. It feels as good as I thought it would!”.

Laconi won the first race from Corser but retired from the second on lap 2 when he lost the rear of his Ducati 999 and crashed out.

“I have wanted to win since the beginning of the season” said Régis. “I almost did it in Monza, but I was a bit disappointed about losing out on the final lap. Now I am very happy to win this one because it is the first victory this year. It’s good because it means that Ducati are doing a great job together to get back to the front and with James on the podium it was a good result for all of us. In the last few laps I knew Troy was behind me so I tried my best not to make any mistake in all the corners. I think that if I am very clean in all the corners it becomes hard for Troy to pass. During the race I had to pass three guys to take the lead, so I rode hard and aggressive, but I am a very happy man today because we did a good job and won one more time for Ducati”.

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