World Superbike Race Red-Flagged

Henny Ray Abrams | May 31, 2009

The first leg of the World Superbike double-header has been red-flagged by a crash on the seventh of 21 laps with Yamaha’s Ben Spies holding a 4.3 second lead.Spies had gotten the jump on the field and was steadily building his advantage when Karl Muggeridge crashed and his Celani Race Suzuki GSX-R1000 spun out onto the race track. Race officials had no choice but to stop the race.Scoring reverted to the end of the fifth lap, the last one completed by the entire field, when Spies held a 4.060 sec. lead on Ten Kate Honda’s Ryuichi Kiyonari. Hannspree Ten Kate Honda’s Carlos Checa was third and Ducati Xerox’s Michel Fabrizio fourth.The race will be 16 laps with the final results determined on aggregate time.The loser in the race stoppage was Kawasaki’s Jamie Hacking. After a slow start, Hacking blitzed through the field and had just moved into fourth when the race was halted. But he’d only been eighth at the end of the fifth lap, so he’ll have to start from the second row, which is where he originally started the race. Hacking moves up one spot on the grid because Aprilia’s Shinya Nakano crashed on the fifth lap and didn’t make the re-start.Ducati Xerox’s Nori Haga leads off row two from Kawasaki’s Broc Parkes and Hacking, and Aprilia’s Max Biaggi.Stiggy Racing Honda’s Jake Zemke will start the second leg 19th.

Henny Ray Abrams | Contributing Editor

Abrams is the longest-serving contributor at Cycle News. Over the course of his 35-some years of writing and shooting photos, he’s covered events from MotoGP to the Motocross World Championship - and everything in between.