2005 CORONA EXTRA SUPERBIKE WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP FLASH NEWS – CURIOSITY 8TH ROUND BRANDS HATCH 5th, 6th and 7th AUGUST 2005 Roma, 28th July 2005 A TRACK FOR TWO WINS Brands Hatch is present in the World Superbike calendar since 1993 and 24 races have been run in it, it seems to be a track well suited for double wins. It happened 7 times that a rider was able to win the first and second race of the day: the first one was Giancarlo Falappa in 1993, followed by Fogarty in 1994, then in 1999 it was Colin Edwards’ turn, in 2001 Ben Bostrom, in 2002 Edwards again, the following year Shane Byrne and then last year Noriyuki Haga. The dominator is Colin Edwards, that won here 6 times compared to Fogarty three, the american rider has 9 podium finishes compared to 7 by Neil Hodgson and Pierfrancesco Chili. Colin leads also the points chart, with 274 points in Brands Hatch, compared to Chili’s 242, and also the fastest laps chart with 4 fastest laps against 2 gained by 6 of his rivals: Slight, Hodgson, Fogarty, Falappa, Corser and Chili. Looking at the pole positions, it’s Neil Hodgson who dominates, with 4 straight poles from 2000 to 2002, in the history of World Superbike only Troy Corser manged to set 4 straight poles on the same track in 4 consecutive years, it happened in his home track, Phillip Island, from 1998 to 2001. A TRACK FOR TWO MAKES In Brands Hatch only Ducati (18 times) and Honda (6 times) managed to win, no other make managed to climb the highest step of the podium. A WEEKEND TO REMEMBER It’s 2003 one, when John Reynolds scored his only pole and his only fastest lap (in race 2) with the Suzuki GSX 1000R the model substituted this year by the GSX 1000R K5. It’s one of the two poles recorded by this model of motorcycle, the other one being the one set by Matthew Mladin in Laguna seca the same year, the previous round. Reynolds broke a string of 9 poles by Ducati in Brands Hatch that lasted since 1995, when Fogarty put the 916 R on pole. A similar period of domination is recorded on the wins side: Ducati won from 1993 to 1997 (8 races) and only Colin Edwards with the Honda RVF 750 was able to break the spell. The 2003 race weekend is remembered also for Ducati domination of the points zone, with 11 bikes in the points in race 1, an absolute record that Borgo Panigale’s factory managed to set 5 times in history, always in 2003 (Oschersleben in both races, Valencia race 1 and Phillip Island race 2). In race 1 the first six places were all by riders on Ducati machinery. A TOUGH TRACK Brands Hatch is a tough track both for men and bikes, it’s the track where have been recorded more retirements per single rider. Lucio Pedercini leads the chart with 11 retirements, an absolute record for a single track in the history of the championship, he is followed by Jiri Mrkyvka with 9 and then Michael Rutter and James Haydon with 8 retirements each. Only at this stage we can find another track with so many retirements per rider: Pedercini and Martin retired 8 times in Phillip Island. Another example of how this track can be hard is race 1 in 1993 run with heavy rain: Giancarlo Falappa won by 36″83 in front of Scott Russell, the second gap in history behind the 56″255 that Goddard put between himself and Robert Phillis in Oran Park, race 1, 1989. A THING LIKELY TO HAPPEN Corser is only 1 win short of the second place all time for wins, held now by Colin Edwards (31 wins), Fogarty is still very distant at 59. CORSER’S ANOMALY Troy is the undisputed king of Superbike qualifying history with 33 pole positions and 71 front rows, but in Brands Hatch he recently didn’t perform up to his standars: he misses the front row since 1998 when he made the pole position. After that he recorded only a sixth place in 1999, a tenth and a sixth in 2000, an eigth in 2001, a twelfth In 2003 and a fifth in 2004. This is quite interesting if we consider that in his career the aussie champion on 111 qualifying attempts only 40 times fell behind the first four positions. LAST TIME IN BRANDS HATCH These are the occurences recorded on the British track that happened for the last time: in 2004 the last fastest lap by an italian rider (Chili in race 1) and last pole by Steve Martin, in 2001 the last win of Ben Bostrom and in 1996 the last time a belgian rider made it to the points, Michel Paquay, twelfth in race 2.