SBK: Bad Weekend for Ducati

This article was last updated on April 16, 2022

Canada: Oye! Times readers Get FREE $30 to spend on Amazon, Walmart…
USA: Oye! Times readers Get FREE $30 to spend on Amazon, Walmart…

There is almost a pattern to the 2012 World Superbike Championship – Sykes starts from the pole position, leads the race for the first couple of laps and then fades away. Checa doesn’t do well in the qualifying, but manages to push his way to the top finishing positions providing, of course, that he finishes the race. Jonathan Rea leaves an impression of a sure winner before every race but somehow manages to lose himself in the process of racing. And then, there is Max Biaggi. Just the same as Carlos Checa, he just can’t seem to wrap up the qualifications with an impression of a sure winner. There is always a bit of a doubt in the final outcome of his racing efforts. The pattern was confirmed at the Misano round too.

Thanks to the impressive performance given by Biaggi and his Aprilia RSV4 superbike, he currently leads the overall World Superbike Championship standings by 38,5 points in front of Jonathan Rea on second. In the Misano Adriatico round, on the recently renamed race track in honor of tragically departed Marco Simoncelli, Biaggi took both wins and with such incredible ease, especially in the Race 2 when he detached himself from the rest of the racers almost immediately and rode his own race up until the very last lap.

But, behind Biaggi’s back, there was an abundance of excitement – it was Checa who pushed for the win in Race 1, but just couldn’t get through. In Race 2, Checa lost his Ducati in a corner during a battle and ended up watching Biaggi take the second victory undisturbed by the distant white specs of Jonathan Rea’s and Leon Haslam’s motorcycles. Superbike newcomer and Checa’s teammate Davide Giugliano rode a very good race up until his spill, just a few laps after Checa. Although some say Giugliano is more of an obstacle on the track than a top contender, with his style he brings in a dose of “all-or-nothing” kind of racing into the game which just can’t be wrong. After all, he is currently placed ninth in the overall standings with eighty points in his pocket

Top three Ducati jockeys missed out on a whole heap of points this weekend. In spite of that, Ducati is still the leader amongst the manufacturers with five wins and eleven podiums as opposed to the second Aprilia with three wins and nine podiums. The third is BMW with just one win less than Aprilia. The last manufacturer on the grid is, you’ve guessed it, Suzuki with only a “participant badge” so far. Wake up Suzuki!

Photos: World SBK

Click HERE to read more from 2wheeltuesday.