Rea wins, Checa third in the first SBK race at Imola

The first Superbike race at Imola has just finished, where our rider, Carlos Checa, could be crowned champion, and now he is a little closer to it.

At the start, “El Toro” was losing a couple of positions, but thanks to his skill he managed to take second place by the time he reached the first corner. Sykes was leading the race in the early laps, and soon a group of five riders formed, which would be the ones to set the pace.

These riders were Sykes, Checa, Rea, Laverty and Haga. Little by little they opened a gap over a chasing group that included, among others, Melandri and Badovini.

After two laps, Sykes was still dominating, and behind him Fabrizio suffered a crash while pushing hard to catch the riders ahead. The next rider who would not be able to finish the race was Xavi Forés, who was making his debut in the category with the Motorrad Italia BMW. He had to head to the pits, and we don’t yet know the cause.

A mistake dropped Checa back to fourth place with eighteen laps to go.

When the race reached its halfway point, Rea took the lead and began to open a gap over Haga, Sykes and Carlos Checa himself. From then on his pace imposed itself, and it would lead him to win the race in the end. Still, it took a lot of fighting, as he had to endure Haga for many laps, and in only a few laps Haga regained the ground the Briton had gained.

There was also a lot of fighting for third place, which seemed destined to go to Sykes, since although he was very close to Checa, the Spanish rider had tried to pass him twice and on both occasions ran wide. But finally Carlos did it with two corners to go: he slipped up the inside and took third, securing the podium.

Thanks to this podium, he is now only eighteen points away from clinching the championship. Let’s see if he can do it in the second race.