2011 World Superbike
When World Superbike made its debut at Motorland Aragon in Spain last weekend, three significant events occurred – home favorite and series’ leader Carlos Checa had his first DNF, the reigning WSBK Champion took his first win, and Yamaha’s Marco Melandri took his first pole position.
Melandri went on to take race 1 at Aragon World Superbike, followed by Biaggi and Aprilia teammate Leon Camier. In race 2, Biaggi won, followed by Melandri and Checa.
Following are some post-race stats from 2011 Aragon World Superbike:
• Maiden pole position for Marco Melandri, the 56th rider in World Superbike history to start from the top spot. In his short Superbike career Marco has never started lower than ninth and he is at his third straight front row start. In race two he recorded his maiden fastest race lap.
• best grid spot for Leon Camier, third, for the first time on the front WSBK row.
• Marco Melandri and Max Biaggi were first and second (and swapped places in the second World Superbike race): the last time that two Italian riders finished first and second (Fabrizio Pirovano and Piergiorgio Bontempi) was at the 1993 Estoril round and since the 1989 Donington weekend that two different Italians won both races: at the time Fabrizio Pirovano and Giancarlo Falappa.
• after eight second places, Max Biaggi was able to score his first World SBK season win, the fifteenth in his career and the twentieth for Aprilia.
• podium number 30 for Carlos Checa in race two: with his crash in race one Carlos saw a sequence of four wins and sixteen races in the points come to an end. It’s the first crash for him since last year’s second Nurburgring race.
• for Jakub Smrz this was a fourth crash in a row: at Misano and Aragon he has only run 17 laps out of 78.
• hard times also for Troy Corser, with a third retirement in the last four races, as well as a missed start in Misano race two.
• in race two Joan Lascorz equalled his best career result: fifth, obtained for the first time at Donington and for the first time he qualified inside the top-10 in seventh.
• 300th start for Noriyuki Haga in race two and 100th for Leon Haslam.
• in Supersport Broc Parkes scored his twelfth pole – after a gap of three years – reaching Paolo Casoli, Fabien Foret and Kenan Sofuoglu in the all-time third spot. At the top of the standings is Sébastien Charpentier with 22.
• Chaz Davies scored Yamaha’s 50th win, Honda leads the way with 83.
• total domination in Superstock 600 by Jed Metcher, who scored pole, win, fastest lap and led the whole race: a similar feat hasn’t been recorded since the 2008 Donington race (Marco Bussolotti).