2013 World Superbike ChampionshipFollowing Assen World Superbike, round 3 of 15 in the 2013 championship, Dorna WSBK released some interesting post-race stats and facts.
The action was intense from the opening day in the Netherlands, with Kawasaki Racing’s Tom Sykes the quickest rider all week. The Brit led Friday’s wet practice/qualifying sessions, and then won Saturday’s Superpole aboard his ZX-10R Ninja.Sykes was then completely dominate in race one, winning by almost nine seconds ahead of Pata Honda’s Jonathan Rea and Aprilia Racing Team’s Sylvain Guintoli. In race two, Sykes was beat to the line by the other Aprilia Racing Team RSV4 rider, Eugene Laverty. Taking third in race two was Sykes’ teammate, Loris Baz.For a review of Assen World SBK, including full results and point standings, click here.Following are a list of facts and stats following Assen World Superbike:
Tom Sykes posted his 13th career pole and his sixth win: for the fourth time he was able to win leading from the start to the chequered flag after Monza, Moscow and Magny-Cours 2012.
Thanks to a successful Race 2 , Aprilia reaches a total of 31 wins, the same of Suzuki, and is now 5th all-time. The latest Suzuki win was in 2010 at Kyalami, courtesy of Leon Haslam. Ironically, that was also Leon’s last win to date.
Jonathan Rea scored his 30th career podium in Race 1, equalling Giancarlo Falappa at 19th all-time place. The Brit got his first front row after last year’s Misano round.
With the fastest lap posted by Tom Sykes, Great Britain now counts 100 fastest laps: at the top of the all-time charts Australia, with 107, followed by Italy at 103.
First race retirement and first race with no points for Jules Cluzel, Race 2.
Mark Aitchison was able to score twice a top-15 finish for the first time since Imola 2011.
Marco Melandri, in his Superbike career, was able to climb on the podium on all tracks except for Imola and Assen. This year he was hit by bad luck, as he was able to score only eight points out of two races, and lies now in 8th place in the Riders Standings. So far he never ranked so low after a race weekend.
Sylvain Guintoli’s seven-races podium streak came to an end with a sixth in Race 2. Now the best string belongs to Sykes: three podiums. In his career Tom was never able to nail four in a row.
The fifth grid slot by Loris Baz is the best career starting position for the French.
In the Supersport class, there were no Honda bikes on the podium after 45 consecutive races where at least one CBR600R finished on the top-3 (since Brno 2009): that was the longest streak in the championship history.
Hello everyone and welcome once again to the Ultimate Motorcycling podcast—Motos and Friends. My name is Arthur Coldwells.
Motos and Friends is brought to you by the Yamaha YZF-R7—Yamaha’s awesome supersport machine that is as capable on the racetrack as it is on the street. …and it’s comfortable too! Check it out at at your local Yamaha dealer, or of course at YamahaMotorsports.com.
In this week’s first segment, Senior Editor Nic de Sena rides the BMW K 1600 GT. This is the sporty bagger version of BMW’s K series of machines, those are the models with the awesome 6-cylinder engine. The GT has been given a little makeover for 2023, and Nic gives us his take.
In the second segment, I chat with one of my all time heroes—three-time World Champion racer ‘fast’ Freddie Spencer. I’ll do my best not to come off as too much of a fanboy here, but frankly it’ll be tough!
In my humble opinion, Spencer is a contender for the GOAT—greatest of all time. Sure, his career was a little shorter than some, and his number of championships falls behind the likes of Lawson, Doohan, Rossi, and of course Marquez. But at the time, Freddie literally changed the way motorcycles were ridden. 30 years before Marc Marquez, Freddie was able to push the front wheel into a slide, corner after corner, lap after lap in order to get the bike turned faster than anyone else. Freddie took completely different lines and was able to get on the throttle so early he could out accelerate anyone off a corner.
In the modern era, of course Freddie is the chairman of the FIM MotoGP Stewards panel. This is the panel of referees for all three classes of Grand prix racing. I talked to Freddie about his task there, and although for contractual reasons with Dorna and the FIM he cannot talk about specific riders, teams, or events, nevertheless his explanation of the job makes for interesting listening. It’s a tough job, and frankly I wouldn’t want to do it!
At any rate, Freddie’s new book ‘Feel’ is available on Amazon—I’d highly recommend you reading it whether you’re a fan of Freddie or not, even whether you’re into racing or not; every rider has something to learn from his mental approach.
Actually—Ultimate Motorcycling is giving away five copies of the book—signed by Freddie himself—to the first five listeners who contact us with the correct answer to the question: How many national AMA championships did Freddie win, and which years were they?
Please email your answers to producer@ultimatemotorcycling.com and we will contact the winners and send you a signed copy of Feel. Those five winners will be announced on a future episode. Unfortunately for legal reasons this offer is ONLY open to US residents.
So, from all of us here at Ultimate Motorcycling, we hope you enjoy this episode!
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