News

RACES

• First career double for Marco Melandri, who joins the elite of 36 riders able to win both races in a weekend: the record men in this area are Troy Bayliss and Carl Fogarty with sixteen each;
• This was also the first BMW double, the eighth constructor to reach this goal. At the top is Ducati, with 112 doubles;
• Marco Melandri is becoming an icon for the German manufacturer: he has given them, in order, their best result, second in Phillip Island this year, then their first win in Donington and now their first double;
• Italian riders now have won seven consecutive races: four by Melandri and three by Biaggi. The record for Italy had already been beaten in Aragon, while the absolute record is still quite far away: in 2003 from Valencia to Silverstone, there were twelve straight British wins, eleven by Neil Hodgson and one by James Toseland;
• In race one Tom Sykes and Loris Baz were able to take two Kawasakis to the podium for the first time since the 2001 Sugo round, when Hitoyasu Izutsu and Tamaki Serizawa were second and third in race two. The Sugo rounds however favoured local wild cards at the time, so to find two Kawasakis on the podium in a race run outside Japan, we have to go back to the 1998 Laguna Seca round, race one, when Akira Yanagawa and Doug Chandler were second and third;
• Loris Baz became the second youngest rider in history to climb on the podium at the age of 19 years, 5 months and 21 days. The record was set by Japan's Yuichi Takeda, in Sugo, 1996: he won at 18 years, 8 months and 27 days;
• Tenth career podium for Tom Sykes in race two;
• A curious record for Eugene Laverty: he has always finished his four races in Brno in fifth place;
• For the first time in his Superbike career, Max Biaggi missed out on the podium in Brno in both races and Jonathan Rea wasn't able to finish in the top-10;

QUALIFYING

• Tom Sykes scored his ninth career pole, joining Raymond Roche at the ninth all-time spot;
• Seventh season pole for Kawasaki, a record for the Japanese manufacturer: the absolute record of thirteen poles was set by Ducati twenty years ago (1992), while in recent times Yamaha were able to record eleven in 2009, all by Ben Spies;
• Tom Sykes, starting from the next round, will be able to reach the third absolute value for season poles: eight, scored by Bayliss in 2008. The absolute record is the aforementioned one by Spies;
• 30th front row start for Carlos Checa, only one less than Max Biaggi in the all-time list. At the top Troy Corser with 99. Milestone also for Eugene Laverty, at his tenth front row start;
• For the third time in the last four races, Davide Giugliano scored his best qualifying result, a fourth, the same spot he occupied in Miller and Misano;
• Max Biaggi's performances in Brno this year were below par also in qualifying: fourteenth, eleven places behind his team-mate Laverty, Up to now he had always qualified on the front row in Brno and was never beaten by a team-mate;

Compiled by Michele Merlino