Britain's Chris Walker on the PSG-1 Kawasaki took his maiden World Superbike win at round nine of the Corona Extra Superbike World Championship at Assen in Holland.
He battled his way from the back row of the grid, having decided to make last minute changes to his machine and not take up his grid slot. He had an excursion across the grass at the start of the race and had the entire field to get through in treacherous wet conditions to take a well earned and long awaited win.
Second place went to Andrew Pitt on the Yamaha Italia machine with
Michel Fabrizio on the DFX Treme Honda in third place.
A jubilant Walker said after the race, “I think that is what Craig Jones would call ‘Living the dream!' I had a miss fire at the end of warm up and we needed to make changes to the bike so I had to come into pit lane and then start from the back of the grid. My team were telling me ‘Stay quiet and do what you do best. It is a long race.' When I went off track at the first corner I thought ‘This is going to be a long race!' I just watched my pit board and stayed out of trouble, the bike worked really well.”
As well as celebrating his first race win Walker had some other more personal news to celebrate, “I asked Rachel my partner to marry me and she said ‘yes' so it is a double celebration.” Walker has always had a big following with the race fans and he thanked everyone for their support, “Big thanks to everyone, I've had huge support. I've been trying to win for eight years and I've only been here officially for five. With the likes of Andrew Pitt and Michel Fabrizio coming through it has not been easy, but a big thanks to everyone.”
Due to the wet conditions there were numerous fallers as Pitt said, “All I saw was yellow flags, so I just concentrated on the road ahead of me. It was slippery and hard work. When I passed Michel I was P4 then P1, so I knew a few more people had gone down. At two thirds race distance the rain was really heavy so I decided it was better to be second. Congratulations to Chris for his win and I was happy just to bring it home.”
