Sunday, June 13th, 2004

Pure theatre. A weekend of joy, of sorrow, of triumph and of defeat. And that's before the racing even started. Thursday afternoon practice. Beautiful sunshine, a smooth, fast, grippy track and all was well. Except that Chris Walker's FP-1 clearly felt that the crowd were being cheated by the fact that it no longer blows flames out of the exhaust on the over-run and decided to correct that by exploding. Literally. A fuel system fault resulted in a hasty dismount for Walker as his bike was engulfed in flames. Then on Saturday morning, while pushing to improve his qualifying time, Walker crashed hard, highsiding the FP-1 and fracturing three ribs. It's a testimony to the strength and determination of the man that he managed to ride in Superpole and qualify in, under the circumstances, and extremely respectable 13th.

Meanwhile, everyone's hero Frankie Chili was riding a storm and was right at the front on his venerable Ducati 998. Everything was looking set for another pole for the Italian, especially as he was by far the quickest in Superpole. Until, halfway round his flying Superpole lap his engine stopped and he was relegated to starting from fourth row in 16th place.

James Toseland struggled for setup on the factory Ducati, not being helped by a change to the bike on Saturday morning which proved to be a step back but which couldn't be undone until later in the day. Nonetheless, a good Superpole put him in fourth place on the grid with for the race.

Leon Haslam, who vies with Toseland and Frankie for the title of "nicest guy in Superbike racing" rounded off a disappointing qualifying session with a blinder of a Superpole, putting him fifth on the grid. Teammate Nori Haga, who had been a man on a mission all weekend, rode a brilliant Superpole to qualify third.

Chris Vermeulen was a bit of a surprise. Despite going well in qualifying, the Ten Kate Honda rider had some traction problems in Superpole that relegated him to second place on the grid behind the other factory Ducati of Regis Laconi.

Troy Corser, himself battling against injuries received headbutting the barrier at Oschersleben, rode the FP-1 to a respectable sixth, and an honourable mention must be made to British privateer entry James Ellison who rode his almost standard Yamaha to seventh on the grid in an outstanding performance.

 

Race One

Chris Vermeulen showed a clean pair of heels to the rest of the pack as he stuck the Honda Fireblade into the lead and kept it there for almost the entire race. Hard on his heels was the snarling, snapping pack of Ducati mounted Laconi, Haga, Toseland and Haslam with the addition of both Foggy-Petronas bikes as well. One of the best rides so far this season saw Frankie Chili claw his way up from 16th to third place while the factory Ducatis had a grim race with Toseland dropping back with tyre problems before enjoying a high speed getoff - the fastest of his career - at Abbey curve when the front tyre just let go. Laconi also fell, losing the front at the chicane having been blitzed by Chili.

But back up at the front, while Haga was keeping the pressure on, Chris Vermeulen looked to have the race in the bag. After all, with just a few corners in the Luffield complex to go, there was no way Haga was going to get past unless he made a mistake, and he wasn't about to do that. And he didn't. But Haga got past anyway, stuffing his Renegade Ducati through a gap that wasn't usable and edging the Aussie off the top spot in the final drag to the line by just a tenth of a second with Frankie seven seconds behind and a massive 20 second gap to Garry McCoy in fourth. Leon Haslam and Steve Martin, spilt by a few hundredths of a second, were a third of a second back from McCoy while Troy Corser brought the FP-1 home 4 seconds later. The top ten was rounded off by Borciani on the DFX Ducati, Bontempi on the Zongshen Suzuki and Ivan Clementi on the very sideways Kawasaki.

But what of Chris Walker? In a weekend that just got worse and worse, Walker's FP-1 seized partway through the long left hander of Luffield, dumping the already battered rider into the gravel and out of the running. Still, at least he received the biggest cheers of the crowd all weekend and had the grace to wave and smile, even if a little ruefully, at the thousands of people yelling their support for possibly the unluckiest man in racing. And that's far more than can be said for Laconi, whose walk back to the pit garage was greeted with something approaching total disinterest by the 60,000 odd race fans to whom the Frenchman has totally failed to endear himself.

 

Race Two

It looked set to be a repeat of the first in many ways. Vermeulen and Haga took the lead, battling constantly and still managing to pull some distance on third placed Laconi. James Toseland was turning in good times and looking set to challenge for a podium when he and Frankie Chili tangled as the Italian attempted an overtake that was probably never going to be on. Chili ended up in the gravel trap and out of the race, while Toseland managed to rejoin, albeit behind Leon Haslam and with lots of muck on his tyres. Nonetheless, he quickly got back up to speed and although he wasn't able to challenge for a podium he rode a good, solid race to finish fifth.

James Ellison continued to shine, bringing the privateer Yamaha in sixth, behind Steve Martin but ahead of Garry McCoy and Troy Corser, while the battered Chris Walker rode a typically gritty race to finish third. Walker had to be helped off his bike in the pits, so hats off to the man for even racing. Another honourable mention must go to Warwick Nowland on the Zongshen Suzuki and to Sergio Fuertes on the MIR Suzuki. Fuertes was going very well, albeit towards to back of the field, on the semi privateer ex Kagayama machine when he clearly got struck by a bit of red mist and attempted to move up a place by getting under, over or through Nowland in the chicane. With just 100m or so to go both riders ended up in the gravel exchanging pleasantries and wating for the marshals to tell them they could move...

So there we have it. The 400th World Superbike race was won for the first time ever by a four cylinder, 1000cc machine, the first time a Honda has won (in fact, the first time a Ducati hasn't won) since Colin Edwards won the title on the Honda SP-2 at Imola in 2002. And it didn't rain once.

There's something else worth mentioning as well. A new presence in the paddock, if not on the track. Burning2Learn is a British organisation working with children who are failing at school and motivating them to succeed in different ways. With the support of ICW Power they managed to get a self contained mobile data centre into the paddock from which groups of children went out and interviewed riders, mechanics, managers and media people before coming back in and putting a video presentation together. The children, mainly from the South East of England, spent the time improving their maths, english, IT and, perhaps most importantly of all, social skills with the help of such celebrities as Leon Haslam, James Toseland, Frankie Chili, Carl Fogarty, Kel Edge, James Haydon, and Jonathon Green. Expect to see more of them as they become better established.

 

Race One Result