Slip sliding at Silverstone in the rain !!!!!!!!

This weekend we were at Silverstone photographing the World Superbikes. The season has started well for Britians James Toseland and the Hannspree Ten Kate Honda team. James lead the championship going into the weekend, by a clear 35 points despite his closest rival Nori Haga taking an impressive race winning double at Monza two weeks ago.

Saturdays practice and superpole qualifying in near perfect conditions, saw the usual suspects on the pace from the word go.

Defending champion Troy Bayliss seemingly fully recovered from his injuries at Donnington Park at the end of March (including the loss of most of his little finger on his right hand) set a new lap record and took pole position for Sundays races.

The World Superbike Championship is a “one ” tyre championship.

All teams must use a Pirelli tyre (there are different compounds available to the teams-but all are Pirelli) and this helps produce really close racing on “production” based bikes. In theory you could pop into your local dealer buy any Superbike, put Pirelli tyres on it and go racing. The reality is that these bikes, although based on standard road going bikes and having the same outline, are far removed from standard bikes and cost in the region of £250,000.00 each !

Come race day on Sunday, the predicted bad weather arrived. These bikes handle dramatically differently in the wet and with in excess of 200bhp being transferred through a contact patch of about the size of the average credit card it requires immense skill to keep these bikes rubber side down. To complicate matters further the riders had had no wet weather practice to work out wet weather settings.

The mornings free practice of twenty minutes is normally used to fine tune yesterdays settings, but in this instance it was all about finding a setup that would work under these extreme conditions. Nori Haga (2nd in the championship) took an early tumble during practice.

The front row of Troy Bayliss, Nori Haga, James Toseland and Lorenzo Lanzi got away ok, but Lanzi soon faded. Corser joined the leading trio, but sadly shortly after this, James Toseland highsided out of fourth place luckily escaping injury, but damaging his bike quite badly with fluid leaking and broken handle bars seemingly ending his race.

He somehow managed to keep the bike running and returned to the race in 18th position.

This left his main title contenders in a strong position at the front and despite the appalling conditions they still managed to race incredibly closely.

Eventually Troy Bayliss made a break

Hotly followed by Nori Haga

As the race progressed James Toseland made steady progress through the field despite the damage to his bike, he was also aided by a few riders crashing on route.

Ruben Xaus highsiding,

Fonso Nieto just avoiding being run over by Lorenzo Lanzi

Max Neukirchner narrowly avoids Alessandro Polita.

Troy Bayliss was the eventual winner followed by Nori Haga and Troy Corser. James Toseland finished in a creditable eigth postion.

Well, with all this excitement who knows what would happen in race two!!

The World Supersport race immediately followed, with much the same problems. Run away championship leader Kenan Sofuoglu didn’t make it past the first corner and many other crashed out on the way.

Once the bike is this far out of shape there’s no way back - Barry Veneman gets it sideways

before crashing out

Massimo Roccoli crashes out from third place

then reality sets in

Anthony West, the eventually winner, was head and shoulders above the rest of the field as he sailed his to the front of the field and off into the distance.

As Race Two of World Superbikes approached the weather closed in and the riders made their way out on the siting lap. On return to the grid, there was much hurried activity within pitlane and all the riders returned to their garages as the start of the race was delayed for thirty minutes.

After much consultation, the organisers quite rightly made the decision to abandon the rest of the meeting due to the appalling conditions.

This left James Toseland still leading the championship albeit with a reduced lead - with Nori Haga now clear in second place and closing in!

Just how so many riders managed to stay on board during the earlier races is a mystery to me and a testament to their incredible riding skills. Lets hope for better weather next time out.