Chaz Davies wins race 1 at Aragon as leaders suffer technical issues

from Twowheelsblog

The first race of the second round of the 2013 World Superbike season was full of technical drama for the podium favourites, Eugene Laverty and Tom Sykes who both suffered from technical issues just a few laps into the race that was won by a highly impressive and fastChaz Davies who took his second Superbike victory of his career.

The race start was slightly delayed as Mark Aitchison’s Effenbert Liberty Ducati died on the starting grid and had to be pushed off to the pitlane. Once the lights went off, Aprilia’s Eugene Laverty got the holeshot ahead of polesitter Tom Sykes, followed by an aggressive Chaz Davies who immediately began nosing around Sykes and the two began exhange paint during lap 2. While Sylvain Guintoli kept his nose clean trying to follow the two battling riders, as Laverty tried to put as much space as possible between himself and the rest of field, while a struggling Marco Melandri dropped to eighth after an error.

During lap 4 while he was leading, Laverty ran slightly wide and his Aprilia began losing power dropping him to the penultimate position and then he was forced to return to his garage to discover what the issue was - he would later rejoin just to test his Aprilia, but his race was irreparably compromised.

With the Aprilia rider out of the contest, Tom Sykes took the lead, but less than two laps later, disaster would also strike the Kawasaki rider, as he too ran wide with an unspecified technical issues letting a close following Davies take the lead, as the Brit rider mestly returned to his garage.

Davies would continue his solitary race in the front unchallenged, while far behind him was Sylvain Guintoli trying to keep control his Aprilia, as Marco Melandri charged up the field disposing of four riders before easily chasing down Guintoli lap after lap, and by the 13th lap caught the French rider and passed him for second place.

However with just four laps left in the 20 lapper, the BMW rider hit a neutral gear and dropped to fifth and his charge for a podium finish began again, as he first disposed of Jonathan Rea and then Davide Giugliano, and would finally take the last spot on the podium, behind Davies and a very thankful and blessed Guintoli.

Heartbreak also struck Davide Giuglian who was looking for a sure fourth spot, but on the final lap just a few hundred feet from the finish line he ran out of gas which would promote Rea into the position, with Loris Baz and Jules Cluzel taking fifth and sixth, respectively. Carlos Checa was a distant seventh never getting into the mix as his Ducati suffers at the Spanish track, while Michele Fabrizio took 8th, unable to find a proper set-up on the performing Aprilia. Leon Haslam was just ninth unable to recover following his crash in QP2, while Ayrton Badovini closed out the top ten in the race that saw just fourteen riders finish.

2013 WSBK Motorlan Aragon Race 1 results:

01- Chaz Davies – BMW Motorrad GoldBet SBK Team – BMW S1000RR – 20 laps in 39’50.332
02- Sylvain Guintoli – Aprilia Racing Team – Aprilia RSV4 Factory – + 5.216
03- Marco Melandri – BMW Motorrad GoldBet SBK Team – BMW S1000RR – + 7.089
04- Jonathan Rea – Pata Honda World Superbike Team – Honda CBR 1000RR – + 8.196
05- Loris Baz – Kawasaki Racing Team – Kawasaki ZX-10R – + 14.417
06- Jules Cluzel – FIXI Crescent Suzuki – Suzuki GSX-R 1000 – + 18.332
07- Carlos Checa – Team Ducati Alstare – Ducati 1199 Panigale R – + 24.306
08- Michel Fabrizio – Red Devils Roma – Aprilia RSV4 Factory – + 25.884
09- Leon Haslam – Pata Honda World Superbike Team – Honda CBR 1000RR – + 35.721
10- Ayrton Badovini – Team Ducati Alstare – Ducati 1199 Panigale R – + 44.129