The Aruba.it Racing – Ducati team once again took the top step of the podium in Race 1 at EuroSpeedway Lausitz (Germany) with Chaz Davies, who thus clinched his fifth win of the season. After a hectic moment before the start due to a rear-brake issue, the Welshman kept his cool and got off to a strong start from sixth position on the grid. Second at the first corner, Davies took the lead in lap 2 and progressively pulled away from Rea and Sykes by imposing a relentless pace in the low 1:37 mark.
Marco Melandri, fourth on the finish line, faced a more difficult race. Despite a positive start from fourth position, the Italian suffered some issues under acceleration as the rear tyre progressively dropped and was forced to play defense. Melandri will start Race 2 from pole position, while Davies will take 9th position on the grid.
The Aruba.it Racing – Ducati team will resume action at 09:30 (CET) tomorrow for warm-up ahead of Race 2 (scheduled to start at 13:00).
Chaz Davies (Aruba.it Racing – Ducati #7) – 1st
“The sighting lap was pandemonium, I nearly high-sided going into the last corner because of an issue with the rear brake. That made for a few tense minutes on the grid, because usually you can’t fix something like that in such a short time, but I have a good crew and they fixed to almost entirely, so it was good enough to allow me to do what I needed to do. Then, I got a great start and found myself in a good position in the early laps. Once I took the lead, I just tried to set my pace without looking at the lap times and we came out on top. The rhythm was good, but there is still room for improvement ahead of Race 2. We’ll start from 9th position but I think this track offers opportunities for overtaking and we’ve worked on our starts recently, finding more consistency, so I’m in for another interesting race.”
Marco Melandri (Aruba.it Racing – Ducati #33) – 4th
“It wasn’t an easy race for us. In the first few laps we managed to stay within the leading group, but as the rear tyre dropped our bike started to wobble too much over the bumps and I was forced to ease off the throttle, losing contact with the riders ahead of me. At first, I tried to compensate by braking later to make up for it but, the harder I pushed, the more mistakes I made, and I almost lost the front a couple of times. Our pace was in the high 1:37 mark today, we couldn’t do more and it wouldn’t have been smart to take more risks. Tomorrow we’ll try some setup modifications during WUP. The goal is to stay with our rivals for the whole race.”
Stefano Cecconi, Aruba S.p.A. CEO and Team Principal
“Chaz gifted us with a very emotional win today, because it was a result of both his heart and his brains. After the issues encountered in the sighting lap, it wasn’t easy to stay calm but, thanks also to great teamwork, he managed to regularly start the race and dictate his pace from early on. Unfortunately, Marco struggled more with the bumps and, after a few laps, he was forced to drop the pace a bit. It’s never easy to do a double, but we’ll try our best to put both our riders in a position to win tomorrow.”
Weekend schedule (CET)
Sunday
09:30 – 09:45 SBK Warm-up
13:00 SBK Race 2
