Interesting facts about WSBK at Laguna Seca
The Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca is back on the World Superbike calendar after eight years. The Californian venue hosted the series from 1995 to 2004 for an overall twenty races. The only active rider who participated in one of these rounds is Leon Haslam, who was ninth and then retired in the two 2004 races.
The most successful riders, with three wins each, are all English-speaking ones: two Americans, John Kocinski and Ben Bostrom, and two Australians, Anthony Gobert and Troy Corser.
On the other hand, no British, French and Irish riders have ever secured a race win or a pole position there in the past: Tom Sykes, Sylvain Guintoli and Eugene Laverty, the first three riders of the current championship standings, might be the first ones to do so.
On the manufacturers side, Ducati has won exactly a half of the races run here (10), followed by Honda (5), Kawasaki and Yamaha (2) and Aprilia, which won in Race 2 here with Troy Corser, in 2000.
Ducati's domination is even clearer if we look at podium finishes: 33 compared to the overall 27 scored by their rivals (13 Honda, 6 Kawasaki, 4 Aprilia, 3 Yamaha, 1 Suzuki). Same story on the pole position ranks: eight for the Ducati manufacturer and only one for Honda and Suzuki.
In 2005 the Laguna Seca track entered the MotoGP calendar, and some of the current World Superbike riders raced in those events:
Carlos Checa, from 2005 to 2007, best result a seventh in 2006;
Marco Melandri, six races from 2005 to 2010: he was third in the 2006 one behind Nicky Hayden and Daniel Pedrosa, repeating the result on the following year behind Casey Stoner and Chris Vermeulen;
Toni Elias, six races from 2005 to 2012: he was sixth in 2009 and seventh the year before;
Sylvain Guintoli, thirteenth and twelfth in 2007 and 2008;
Chaz Davies, sixteenth in 2007.
