Cal Crutchlow powered through the pain barrier to take third place and a victory in the third round of the British Superbike Championship at Brands Hatch. The HM Plant Honda rider sustained a dislocated right ankle and ligament damage in a recent crash but was passed fit to race after lengthy treatment by the Coventry City physio and series medics.
Former champion Shane Byrne won the opening race by almost two seconds from Rizla Suzuki rider Tom Sykes with Crutchlow just adrift.
In the second race, after team-mate Leon Haslam had run wide while leading, Crutchlow moved ahead.
The intervention of the safety car while Malcolm Ashley was treated after a heavy crash bunched the pack, with Byrne and Sykes just behind Crutchlow.
Spettacolo e sorprese nel GP d’Italia Superbike. Davanti a 112 mila spettatori (record) vittorie di tappa di Max Neukirchner (Suzuki) e Noriyuki Haga (Yamaha). Troy Bayliss, sempre protagonista, si è ritirato per un problema al motore Ducati dopo il terzo posto della prima uscita. Sfortuna nera per Max Biaggi che ottiene un buon quinto posto e poi viene spinto fuori pista da Jakub Smrz. Nella collisione innescata Biaggi ha subìto la rifrattura del dito mignolo della mano sinistra già lesionato nel 1999, quando correva in 500. La mano di Max è stata immobilizzata con una fasciatura leggera che verrà tolta alla vigilia del prossimo GP negli Usa, il primo giugno. L’uscita di Bayliss, la prima della stagione e su questo tracciato, non crea contraccolpi nella classifica Mondiale. Anzi l’australiano (194 punti) sale a +78 sull’immediato inseguitore Carlos Checa (Honda) caduto senza conseguenze.
Ferrari’s Felipe Massa won the Turkish Grand Prix from pole position for the third year in a row after tyre concerns slowed Lewis Hamilton’s challenge. The Brazilian took the chequered flag 3.7 seconds ahead of the 23-year-old McLaren driver, who ran most of the race on the harder tyres and had to make three pitstops compared to his rivals’ two.
It was Massa’s seventh win in Formula One, at the anti-clockwise track where he took his first in 2006, and his second in five races this season.
Ferrari’s world champion Kimi Raikkonen saw his overall lead trimmed to seven points from nine after finishing a close third.
Ha vinto Felipe Massa, al terzo successo consecutivo in Turchia, ed era un successo che si poteva facilmente prevedere. Ma il brasiliano c’è riuscito dopo una gara movimentata dalla scelta della McLaren di far effettuare a Lewis Hamilton una tattica su tre soste invece di due. Alla fine non è bastato all’inglese per vincere. Ma ha movimentato la corsa, regalando anche un bellissimo sorpasso, quello con cui Lewis è andato in testa a metà gara infilando proprio Massa.
The crowd booed him. He called his car pathetic. His crew missed a lug nut, and he couldn’t stay off Darlington Raceway’s wall. Despite it all, Kyle Busch found Victory Lane once again. NASCAR’s least popular driver raced to his third Sprint Cup Series victory of the season Saturday night, winning a battle of attrition at the track “Too Tough to Tame.”Busch’s victory hardly thrilled the crowd, which viciously booed him in prerace introductions and hadn’t softened by the time he took the checkered flag. Already loathed by many, he enraged Dale Earnhardt Jr’s massive fan base by wrecking him as they raced for the win last week in Richmond.
Five-time champion Valentino Rossi won his first MotoGP race of 2008 with a superb performance in Shanghai. The Italian legend set a succession of lap records in cool, slightly damp conditions, shaking off the persistent Dani Pedrosa, who takes over the championship lead. Ducati’s Casey Stoner finished some way back in third ahead of the heroic Jorge Lorenzo, who broke his ankle in a horrifying crash on Friday but raced on to claim fourth.
Nel GP di Cina Valentino conquista il successo sette mesi dopo l’ultima volta all’Estoril. Splendida cavalcata a colpi di giri record. Alle sue spalle Pedrosa, 3° Stoner. Ottimo Melandri 5° dietro a Lorenzo, incredibile 4° con la frattura alla caviglia sinistra.
Big Brown was pulling away from the field, accelerating with every powerful stride toward the finish line in the Kentucky Derby.
The crowd of 157,770 was on its feet and cheering as the big, unbeaten, muscular bay crossed the line first, 4 3/4 lengths ahead of the filly Eight Belles. Trainer Rick Dutrow Jr. was still celebrating, along with thousands of happy bettors, as Big Brown and the 19 other horses in Saturday’s race galloped out around the first turn at Churchill Downs.
It took a few minutes to sink in, but anyone watching those horses soon realized that one of them had fallen to the track. In just a few minutes, the joy of the Derby and the promise of a new Triple Crown season were upended when Eight Belles was euthanized by injection on the track.
Richard Childress always tells his drivers that luck occurs when preparation meets opportunity. Clint Bowyer proved the boss right on Saturday night. Bowyer was a surprise winner at Richmond International Raceway, stealing a win that first seemed destined for Denny Hamlin, then Dale Earnhardt Jr. Neither made it to Victory Lane, though, because of a wild ending that saw three drivers denied the trip Bowyer made to Victory Lane.
Hamlin, the hometown favorite, ran away with the race and led a record 381 of the 400 laps in search of his first Cup victory at Richmond. Nobody came close to challenging him until a leaking right front tire allowed Earnhardt and Kyle Busch to catch him.
The two drivers split Hamlin as they moved past him, with Earnhardt emerging as the leader with 18 laps to go. Hamlin’s tire finally failed with eight to go, and NASCAR accused him of intentionally bringing out the caution that regrouped the field and gave Busch a chance to race Earnhardt for the win.
Any place, any time, any way necessary. Kyle Busch went from a lap down to a winner at a track that has haunted him.
And when things are going your way, as they are for Busch, you also catch a break when you need it.
Busch was leading the Aaron’s 499 on the last lap, the potential sucker hole at Talladega, but a 12-car crash behind him brought out the caution and ended the race.
The green-white-checkered rule doesn’t apply if the caution comes out after the white flag.
The only real surprise in Sunday’s Road Runner Turbo Indy 300 at Kansas Speedway was which Target/Ganassi Racing driver won.
Scott Dixon dominated the first three-quarters of the 200-lap IndyCar Series event, but unlucky timing on his final pit stop cost the New Zealand native. That allowed Dan Wheldon to cruise to an easy win over Andretti Green Racing’s Tony Kanaan, with Dixon recovering from seventh to third over the final 27 laps.
Dixon led 145 of the first 152 laps before pitting for his final scheduled stop. While he was in the pits, the yellow flag flew for Buddy Rice’s Turn 2 accident, costing Dixon the lead to Wheldon.
Lewis Hamilton battled to a podium finish at the Spanish Grand Prix as Kimi Raikkonen and Felipe Massa secured a Ferrari one-two. Raikkonen’s 17th grand prix win - from pole position - left the Finn with 29 points, nine clear of closest rival Hamilton, and catapulted Ferrari back in front of BMW Sauber in the constructors’ standings. Spaniard Fernando Alonso, who started on the front row for Renault, retired on lap 35 with a blown engine but he had already fallen down the field after being the first driver to refuel. Massa, winner in Bahrain, had got past double world champion Alonso at the start while Hamilton slotted into fourth place after muscling past BMW Sauber’s Robert Kubica from fifth.
Dominio Ferrari nel Gran Premio di Spagna. A vincere è Kimi Raikkonen che precede sul traguardo Felipe Massa, per la casa di Maranello è la seconda doppietta consecutiva, per Raikkonen il secondo successo stagionale e il diciassettesimo in carriera, per Massa è la definitiva conferma dopo le prime due deludenti gare. Partito dalla pole position, Raikkonen ha anche fatto segnare il giro più veloce completando un dominio che è stato totale durante quasi tutto il weekend. Al terzo posto il pilota della McLaren Lewis Hamilton.
Troy Bayliss secured a double race win in Holland to stretch his World Superbike Championship lead to 70 points.
The Australian had put his Xerox Ducati on pole position and also took both race wins at Assen as he continued to dominate his final series before retirement.
Bayliss took his points total to 178 as Spaniard Carlos Checa moved up to second in the standings after two podium finishes at Assen on the HANNspree Ten Kate Honda.
Bayliss was delighted with his perfect weekend which saw him add his second double race win of the season to pole position. Race 1:
