First win for Walker and tenth win for Bayliss at Assen

Series leader Troy Bayliss with Andrew Pitt and Fonsi Nieto. © FGSport. PSG-1 Kawasaki Corse rider Chris Walker drove the strong British contingent in the Assen crowd wild after taking his first career victory in SBK. Series leader Troy Bayliss may have crashed in the first race at Assen but after an assured display of riding to win in race two, he left with an increased championship advantage, with three rounds still to run.

His main championship rivals had virtual disasters in the wet first, and largely dry second, races but despite only finishing with a tenth and ninth place James Toseland (Winston Ten Kate Honda) regained overall second in the title hunt. Noriyuki Haga (Yamaha Motor Italia) and Troy Corser (Alstare Suzuki Corona Extra) both fell in both races and scored no points. In the championship battle, Bayliss now leads Toseland by 100 points, 332 to 232, with Haga third on an unchanged 230.

A fuel and oil spill in the wet morning warm-up led to some delays in the race schedule, but the 22-lap Superbike races themselves went ahead as planned and on time. In race one, an astonishing 22-lap contest gave Chris Walker his first ever World Superbike race win, as the Nottinghamshire rider overcame the atrocious weather and slippery track to go from dead last - and on the gravel at the first corner on lap one - to victor in front of a drenched Assen crowd. It was Kawasakis first race win in SBK since a double success for Hitoyasu Izutsu, at Sugo in 2000.

Walker's last podium finish was in 2005, third at Valencia. In second place came Andrew Pitt, with Michel Fabrizio taking his Honda DFX Treme Honda to third, after moving forward confidently from a 14th place start.

In the second race, on a dry track with damp patches around, Bayliss took another of his assured race wins, after an early fight with eventual fourth place rider, Yukio Kagayama. He was almost ten seconds ahead of second place rider Pitt, who now sits fourth overall, on 197 points after two runner-up rides. In a strong day for PSG-1 Kawasaki Corse rider Fonsi Nieto, a fourth in race one was followed up but his first career SBK podium of third in race two.

With so many riders falling in the opening race, including potential podium rider Ruben Xaus (Sterilgarda Berik Ducati) the privateer machines of Norick Abe (Yamaha Motor France Ipone) and Max Neukirchner (Alstare Engineering Suzuki) ran out fifth and sixth, with the factory Ducati of Lorenzo Lanzi the top twin cylinder rider on show, seventh. He was followed by the private machine of Roberto Rolfo (Ducati SC Caracchi) and also Karl Muggeridge, who was in a podium scoring place before running off track in race one and then losing traction to finish 13th in race two. There were only 15 finishers in race one, but Steve Martin (Petronas FP-1) obtained the first of two points scoring results, with 12th in the wet opener, 11th in the dry second race.

Second race offered second chance for some riders like Alex Barros, who pulled out of race one after feeling a lack of confidence in his front fork performance in the rain, but he recovered in race two to score seventh, albeit dropping to sixth in the overall standings after a tough weekend. Xaus made a superb recovery in race two to fifth, and had he not found his rear traction diminishing slowly as time went on, he could have challenged for the podium right to the end. Regis Laconi (PSG-1 Kawasaki Corse) a faller in race one, found chattering a problem in race two, but still finished in the top eight. A six-rider battle in the early laps featured Laconi in the vanguard. Rounding out the top ten, Toseland found his six points enough to put him second in the series, but a gearbox problem for Michel Fabrizio (DFX Treme Honda) put him 10th. Pierfrancesco Chili, Fabrizio's team-mate, endured a crash in race one and a retirement from race two. Sebastien Gimbert (Yamaha Motor France Ipone) damaged his back in race one, and us undergoing exploratory scans in hospital.
(FGSport)

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