2012 World Superbike Statistics
Last weekend’s World Superbike round at Silverstone was plagued by inclement weather conditions, which are not unusual for Great Britain.
But the conditions were favorable for two Frenchmen who each to a win at round 10 of 14 – Kawasaki Racing Team’s Loris Baz (race-one winner) and newly-signed Pata Racing Ducati’s Sylvain Guintoli.
Joining Baz on the Silverstone SBK race-one podium was the BMW Motorrad Italia GoldBet duo of Michel Fabrizio and Ayrton Badovini, the latter crashing across the line with Honda World Superbike’s Jonathan Rea.
In a shortened, rain-plagued race two, Guintoli was joined on the podium by Baz and Team Effenbert Liberty Racing Ducati’s Jakub Smrz.
Following are a list of statistics from Silverstone World Superbike, compiled by Michele Merlino:
• Maiden career win for Loris Baz, the second youngest winner in Superbike history at the age of 19 years, 6 months and 4 days: in front of him is only Yuichi Takeda, the wild-card rider who won at Sugo in 1996 at 18 years, 8 months and 27 days of age. Loris scored his first win in his eleventh race, like Carlos Checa, back in 2008, in Miller;
• Baz is the second French winner this year after Guintoli in Assen: it’s the first time in history that two different French riders are able to win in the same season. The other French winners are Raymond Roche (23 wins from 1989 to 1992), Regis Laconi (11 from 2001 to 2005) and Adrien Morillas, who won the first race for Kawasaki at the Hungaroring in 1988, race two;
• Kawasaki with this win takes the clock back to its best years: they haven’t won two races in the same season since 2000, when Izutsu won the two rounds in Sugo; without considering the races run in Japan, to find a similar or higher number of season wins, we have to go back to 1996, when Anthony Gobert won the second race in Laguna Seca and both rounds in Phillip Island with the ZX-7RR;
• Kawasaki scored eleven podiums this year, a value they reached for the last time in 1997, when they counted twelve, scored by Simon Crafar and Akira Yanagawa;
• In race two Loris Baz posted his maiden fastest lap and became the youngest ever to do so: he beat by almost two years Anthony Gobert, who was 21 years 4 months and 6 days old when he recorded his first fastest lap in Laguna Seca, 1996, race one;
• 34th career podium for Michel Fabrizio, who hasn’t been able to finish on the rostrum since Monza last year, race two;
• Maiden career podium for Ayrton Badovini, in his 75th race: he has been waiting for a podium finish since the 2010 Superstock 1000 race held in Magny-Cours. The Italian also posted his maiden fastest race lap;
• The podium of race one is the tenth youngest in history: Baz, Fabrizio and Badovini combined for an average age of 24 years, 6 months and 9 days. The record was set in Laguna Seca in 1995 in race two, when Troy Corser, Anthony Gobert and Mike Hale had an average of 22 years, 2 months and 16 days. This fact is even more curious if we consider that only four races ago, in Aragon, race one, Biaggi, Melandri and Checa recorded the fifth oldest podium, with an average of 36 years, 10 months and 16 days. On this side of the chart, the record was set in Misano 2010, race one, with Biaggi, Checa and Corser (38 years, 5 months and 4 days);
• In race two Sylvain Guintoli scored his second win after the one in Assen, completing a great day for France, and taking their wins tally to 38, two more than Spain. At the top of the chart Australia and United States, with 118 wins each;
• Fifth career podium, and first of the season, for Jakub Smrz, third in race two;
• The crash in race one put an end to a string of nineteen races in the points for Max Biaggi. Max doesn’t have a great feeling with this track: it’s the only one in the 2012 calendar, together with the Nurburgring, in which he has never finished on the podium;
• First top-10 placement of the season for John Hopkins, tenth in race two;
Qualifying:
• Third career pole for Jakub Smrz after Misano 2009 and Miller this year. Now the Czech rider counts the same number of poles as Jonathan Rea. Amongst current riders, only Sykes (9 poles) and world champions Checa (8) and Biaggi (4) have more pole positions. This was Ducati’s 160th pole: the Italian manufacturer leads the chart in front of Honda (44);
• Best career qualifying result for Leon Camier, second on the grid. Up to Silverstone the British rider had scored a third in Aragon and Silverstone last year. A Suzuki didn’t qualify on the front row since last year’s Silverstone races, when Hopkins set pole here. For Suzuki this was the 70th race with at least one bike on the front row;
• For the first time this season, Tom Sykes didn’t qualify on the front row (8th).
