Aruba Ducati’s Chaz Davies swept to a majestic second World Superbike race win at Motorland Aragon this afternoon, taking the holeshot ahead of Jonathan Rea and Leon Haslam to cross the line with a three-second advantage.
But it was disaster for Kawasaki’s Tom Sykes who was pinged over the highside of his Kawasaki ZX-10R with 14 laps to go. The former champion was looking for a way past Haslam but asked to much of his rear Pirelli on the exit of turn 15 and ended unhurt in the Spanish gravel.
Davies, who hasn’t won a race since the Nurburgring in 2013, was never headed and slowly built a lead of more than four seconds with a fastest lap of 1’51.156 while Haslam and Rea fought it out for the podium spots. Sykes’ exit left a ten-second gap back to Jordi Torres in fourth.
Haslam made some changes to his RSV4 between races and the additional track temperature helped the Aprilia. A mid-race lull saw him drop to almost a second behind Rea but he upped the pace again to cut the gap back to a quarter of a second.
Rea said after the race he was getting good signals and didn’t think Haslam had the pace to come past and the gap remained between a quarter and half a second to the line as the Derbyshire man just didn’t have enough to show Rea a wheel.
The Isle of Man resident extends his lead at the top of the table to 26 points over Haslam while Davies leapfrogs Sykes into third.
Torres, on the second Red Devils RSV4, had a lonely race after dispensing with the challenge of Davide Giugiano’s replacement Xavi Fores. Kawasaki’s David Salom nipped ahead of the battling Tati Mercado, Michael Van Der Mark and Ayrton Badovini for sixth place while Nico Terol completed the top ten.
It was another race to forget for Alex Lowes who ran straight on at turn eight on lap one. The Voltcom Suzuki man re-joined and eventually carved his way through to 14th place, one ahead of Leon Camier and one behind Randy De Puniet. Reigning champion Sylvain Guintoli was also a crasher, losing the front into turn 14.
