The sixth 2018 World Supersport race had less overtakes and coups-de-theatre than usual, but in any case it was exciting. Who won is Sandro Cortese, cpming back to the middle of the podium one month and a half after Motorland Aragon’s “first time”. Jules Cluzel and Raffaele De Rosa joined him on the podium.
CLUZEL STARTS WELL – After scoring pole position, Cluzel remained first with a good start and then he distanced a bit his opponents, whose first one was Cortese. Cluzel seemed to be faster and willing and able to go away, but later Cortese and De Rosa bridged the gap from the Frenchman and so they formed a front trio followed by Lucas Mahias, Randy Krummenacher and Federico Caricasulo. For some laps Cortese was very close to Cluzel, but he never managed to overtake him: Cortese was faster in the first two sectors, but Cluzel had something more in the third and fourth one.
DECISIVE MOVE – The situation lasted till the seventh of today’s 20 laps, when Cortese attacked Cluzel following a slight mistake of him at Coppice. Later Cortese tried to distance Cluzel and De Rosa, but he managed to do it just at the fifteenth lap, after that “Julo”‘s mistake at Old Hairpin helped him in pulling away and De Rosa in going second. Cluzel went back to second place at the third-last lap, by overtaking De Rosa at Fogarty Esses, but Cortese had already gone and finally the German Kallio Racing rider won with a good advantage on Cluzel (2nd) e De Rosa (3rd).
GLI ALTRI – Outside the top 3, Randy Krummenacher fought for fourth place with GRT Yamaha duo Lucas Mahias-Federico Caricasulo and finally he won the battle and crossed the line earlier than Mahias, “Carica” and Ayrton Badovini, with the latter ranking seventh after a race-long duel with Thomas Gradinger. Sheridan Morais and Andrew Irwin closed the top 10. Disappointing 16th for Luke Stapleford, who has just switched from Triumph to Yamaha, while Hikari Okubo and Rob Hartog didn’t finish the race due to crashes (the Jap at McLean’s after few laps, the Dutch at Craner Curves halfway the race). The first ESS rider in the classification is Eemeli Lahti, who ranked 18th followed by Alfonso Coppola and Wayne Tessels.
CAMPIONATO – Not just his second 2018 one: the win at Donington is very important for Sandro Cortese, because he took the lead of the championship by passing Randy Krummenacher. Now “Sandrissimo” leads the standings with 102 points, followed by Cluzel (95), Krummenacher (94), Mahias (90), Caricasulo (79) and De Rosa (67).
Photo Credit: Philippe Damiens