Champion by half a point!
PH2 belatedly catches up with one of the most exciting WSB finales ever!
Heading into the final round at Magny Cours, Max Biaggi on his Aprilia looked a sure-fire certainty to secure his second WSB championship to add to his four 250GP titles. All he had to do was stay out of trouble...
Race on and on a damp track the unthinkable happened, Max hit the deck on lap two, surrendering a stack of points and with home-town hero Sylvain Guintoli taking the win with Marco Melandri second and Tom Sykes third. It was all to play for in the final race of the year.
Fair play, you have to hand it to Sykes. He has been the man of the 2012 WSB season and if it wasn't for a blown engine at the last round what could have been? Knowing it was win or bust, Sykes stormed to the front and through sheer determination kept his Kawasaki there all race, putting the title's fate in Biaggi's hands. The Italian needed to finish fifth or higher and there was a stack of riders who wanted to stop him doing this.
One of the most fascinating races for years unfolded as each time someone overtook you were left calculating what that would mean to for the championship. Unfortunately for Sykes a huge highside by Melandri and Haslam also hitting the dirt, not to mention the terrible top speed of the two Ducati riders, allowed Max to squeeze into fifth with a handful of laps to go, a place he held onto to finish the race. Champion by just 0.5 points from a gutted but magnanimous Sykes - what an awesome season of racing.
its ruined now.
I was watching highlights on Eurosport and just before the show started there was a 15min motorsports round up on, which gave the results!
The highlight show as on late too, so I had to half glance with one eye to see when it started, I saw a brief clip but it didn’t ruin it for me, thankfully.
So I feel for you!
Some advice:
Be sure to watch the last round of BSB this weekend on as soon as you can and avoid PH on other sites as you don't want the same situation to arise!
I prefer the ITV4 highlights show to Eurosport coverage of BSB so I have to avoid certain internet pages, PH2, MCN paper [ I can’t even look at the shelf in a shop as they results will be on front cover lol] until Wednesday at 8pm or so.
But I think this week I will have to watch it on Eurosport as its the last round, triple header - should be great - remember last year.
MotoGP may be the pinnacle but the racing in WSB and BSB are so much better.
I hope Tommy Hill, Lowes, Byrne & Brooks [or a couple of them anyway] get a competitive ride in WSB [and don’t go to MotoGP on a CRT bike] then it would be even better than this year
Max Biaggi | Aprilia | 358 |
Tom Sykes | Kawasaki | 357.5 |
Marco Melandri | BMW | 328.5 |
Carlos Checa | Ducati | 287.5 |
Jonathan Rea | Honda | 278.5 |
The French National anthenm rang out for 4 of 5 races during the day so the wine ran freely and the atmosphere was brilliant.
It's such a shame since Brands Hatch was dropped from the WSB calendar we do not have a single round that now rivals the European rounds for atmosphere ..... We were between Adelaide and Chateaux D'eau and the view was excellent, plus big screen, plus voical crowd. So much better than Donington or Silverstone.
Gutted for Tom, but he'll have learnt a lot this year and his ride in tthe 2nd race was fantastic ...
I still remember the day I rocked up with over 100,000 other people for wsb. You won't be getting that at Donny or the other sthole
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