Hot damn! Race 1 at Donington Park was everything that any hot blooded racing fan could hope for and get. If anyone was expecting to see Carlos Checa run away with it again will be slightly disappointed, but Marco Melandri’s tremendous and exciting fight for the win will certainly make up for it, and since we like to rub it in, a slap towards Max Biaggi’s behaviour yesterday.

Melandri not only won his first race in WSBK after just debuting a month ago on the Yamaha R1, battling it with several riders, especially with his old/new nemesis Max Biaggi. Showing a suprisingly cool head (despite waking up this morning with a raging fever) he hunted down a shockingly fast and uncharacteristically consistent Jakub Smrz who was leading the race by 2.4s. Nothing was stopping the Italian rider as he began cutting into Smrz’s lead with just fives laps to go and on the penultimate lap swept past the Czech rider to cross under the chequered flag first.

Smrz held on to his second spot despite fastly fading tires and taking his best result ever. Carlos Checa ended up third after getting caught up in the rampaging field during the first lap and falling back to 11th, but he pulled out all stops on his Ducati to overtake Leon Haslam (4th) on the final lap and grab a much deserved podium.

Continue reading: WSBK Donington: Shake-up sees Melandri win his first race

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Ben Spies took his ninth World Superbike victory of the season in race one at Donington Park.

Off the starting line Ben Spies race pace was impressive as it was all weekend, but the surprise came from Max Biaggi and his Aprilia. The Roman Emperor stuck to Spies Yamaha for the entire race, almost matching the Texan’s race times. On the final lap Biaggi’s Aprilia slowed and died due to gas pump problems, but he was able to re-fire her up again and crossed the finish line second.

Third place went to point’s leader Noriyuki Haga, who managed to stay with two front runners for a couple of laps but started to fade and finished in a loney third.

Continue reading: WSBK Donington Race 1 - Spies takes 9th win

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