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Sofuoglu pleased to extend winning run

Tuesday, 20 June 2017 11:24 GMT

The World Champion gave his thoughts after another stunning win at Round 7

Kenan Sofuoglu (Kawasaki Puccetti Racing) showed why he is a five-time World Champion with a fourth successive victory at the weekend in Sunday’s Pirelli Riviera Di Rimini Round WorldSSSP race.

Unable to participate in the opening two rounds of 2017 due to injury and suffering a DNF on his return at Aragon, Sofuoglu has now put those early season problems behind him with a maximum 100-point haul from the last four rounds.

After his latest win at Misano he commented, “It wasn’t easy because the temperature was very warm and I can’t say I was fast this weekend. Before the race in the warm up everybody’s lap times were very close. Everyone’s pace was really similar and I had a big question mark about what could happen in the race.”

“Honestly when I look at the race I think my experience won it. I wasn’t fast enough to win this race but I have a lot of experience and I saw that just Jules (Cluzel) was following me. I wanted to see how fast he was. Then I understood and we dropped the lap time so that meant I had to go a little bit faster, I could pull a gap, that was the goal and it worked very well. I am very happy because it was an important race.”

Now just five points off the top of the standings, which are still led by Lucas Mahias (GRT Yamaha Official WorldSSP Team) who suffered a DNF at Round 7, Sofuoglu added, “Of course the championship looks like it is getting closer but at the moment I am just enjoying winning races.”

“I don’t want to put any stress on the championship. For me when I was having an operation on the hand injury and then I crashed at Aragon I thought this year maybe it is not possible to win the championship, this is a year for less stress and to enjoy racing.  For the moment it is working very well, I keep winning and I want to continue in the same way.”