Monday, June 30, 2008

Bautista takes commanding Assen win

Aprilia's Alvaro Bautista took a commanding win over Thomas Luthi in the 250cc Dutch TT at Assen, with this second victory of the year putting the Spaniard in fourth position in the championship.

The race was deemed wet after a little bit of rain hit the track shortly before the start, forcing a further five-minute delay on top of a re-scheduling due to the 125cc race running late. Despite that, the riders chose to take the start with dry-weather tyres.

Bautista, who made a bad start from pole position and dropped down to ninth position, was the only rider able to close an early gap opened early in the race by the Swiss.

The quickest off the line and leading at the first corner was third-on-the-grid Marco Simoncelli, but an overtaking move by Aprilia's Luthi, who started sixth, forced the Gilera rider to close the gas and lose several positions, eventually finding himself in 12th by the end of lap one.

Meanwhile, Luthi started opening a gap over second-placed Alex Debon. By the end of lap six Bautista had recovered lots of positions and had just managed to overtake his compatriot to slot into second, albeit over three seconds behind Luthi.

That gap was closed six laps later, and on lap 13th the two riders exchanged position, while the rest of the pack, headed by Debon, Hector Barbera and an impressive Simoncelli, was eight seconds behind the leading duo.

Luthi took the lead back from Bautista for three laps after more rain briefly hit the track around lap 15, but Bautista had none of it and after taking first place back on lap 19 he opened a gap that by the end of the 24-lap race was almost five seconds.

Simoncelli made a fine recovery from his first-lap problems and almost managed to threaten Luthi's second place, eventually finishing 1.4 seconds behind. Simoncelli is now just one point away from KTM's Mika Kallio at the top of the standings, with the latter classifying only seventh.

Three seconds behind Simoncelli, Debon managed to beat Barbera for fourth place by less than half a tenth, after the two Aprilia riders had a hard battle throughout the race.

On lap 14 Barbera went wide while overtaking Debon, cut through a turn and almost crashed into Kallio upon rejoining the track. That overtaking attempt at that same corner happened again on the last lap and had the same outcome, minus the near-miss.

KTM's Hiroshi Aoyoma took sixth position away from teammate Kallio with less than three laps of the race remaining.

Russel Gomez had a crash on lap one, while Mattia Pasini had another on lap eleventh while he was eighth.

CLASSIFIED: Pos Rider Bike Time 1. Alvaro Bautista Aprilia 40:54.117 2. Thomas Luthi Aprilia + 4.597 3. Marco Simoncelli Gilera + 6.003 4. Alex Debon Aprilia + 9.034 5. Hector Barbera Aprilia + 9.079 6. Hiroshi Aoyama KTM + 11.515 7. Mika Kallio KTM + 12.874 8. Yuki Takahashi Honda + 13.622 9. R.Locatelli Gilera + 21.168 10. Julian Simon KTM + 28.789 11. Hector Faubel Aprilia + 37.607 12. R.Wilairot Honda + 37.741 13. Fabrizio Lai Gilera + 38.729 14. Alex Baldolini Aprilia + 39.165 15. Lukas Pesek Aprilia + 43.037 16. Eugene Laverty Aprilia + 54.171 17. Aleix Espargaro Aprilia + 54.334 18. Frederik Watz Aprilia +1:24.430 19. D.T.Pradita Yamaha + 1 Lap 20. Imre Toth Aprilia + 1 Lap NOT CLASSIFIED/RETIREMENTS: Rider Bike On lap Manuel Poggiali Gilera 18 Mattia Pasini Aprilia 12 Russell Gomez Aprilia 1 Karel Abraham Aprilia DNS FASTEST LAP: Bautista, 1:40.340 on lap 12

  • Kallio leads KTM 1-2 at Shanghai
  • Simoncelli snatches win from Bautista
  • Chilton takes wet pole at Rockingham
  • Hartley takes Snetterton pole
  • Mustonen takes Rockingham victory
  • Bautista takes home pole in Spain
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