Carlos Checa wins the 2nd race of the SBK at Assen
Rider Carlos Checa has won the second race of the World Superbike Championship at Assen. The Catalan is on a roll, he doesn’t leave the podium: of the six races held he has been on every podium. Without a doubt, it is the year of the TORO.
Noriyuki Haga got an explosive start; the Japanese rider overtook all the favourites and took first place, trying to pull away from the start, but he couldn’t break free from the group and they caught him, both Max Biaggi, Carlos Checa and several other riders.
At that point Checa took control of the race and tried to pull the group along, with a very combative Biaggi glued to his rear wheel, and a little further back, the winner of the first race, Rea, with Melandri, so we had two pairs fighting and very far from the rest of the rivals.
Biaggi wasn’t very aggressive either; I think he was studying the Catalan, because he didn’t try to overtake him until the end of the race, which is partly logical so as not to get in each other’s way and so that the group would come back together, so it wasn’t until the last two or three laps that we could see a fight between them.
For his part, Melandri and Rea had their ups and downs between them, with the Italian ending up on the ground; the Yamaha rider pushed the machine too hard and went off track, handing the third place on the podium to the Briton on a plate.
Meanwhile, up front, Checa and Biaggi began to see victory very close, and as soon as he could the Italian slipped past him in the chicane and then overtook him on the acceleration down the finish straight, closing off the braking point, so now the Champion dominated the race, but it was clear that Checa was not going to give up at all, so everyone was waiting for the moment, and he chose the same spot Biaggi had used before, but with a spectacular move on the INSIDE.
With this last pass Checa secured the victory, because Biaggi dropped back a little, while Rea came in third in this second SBK race at Assen.
Right now Checa leads with 132 points, followed by Biaggi with 89 and Melandri with 85, with Rea moving up to fourth place with 79 points in the overall standings.
See you on 8 May at Monza.
We’ll keep an eye on the SBK.
Photo | WorldSBK
