James Toseland took a dominant race one win at round three of the Corona Extra Superbike World Championship at
Donington Park in the UK.
He had been running in second place on his Hannspree Ten Kate Honda behind Xerox Ducati's
Troy Bayliss who crashed out at Coppice. Bayliss has sustained a lot of damage to his little finger on his right hand and has been taken to hospital for further checks. He is out of race two but his team hope he will be fit in two weeks time for round four at Valencia.
Toseland commented on Bayliss' crash, “I saw him go right in front of me. You don't high side at Coppice and not hurt, so I had a bit of a grimace for him.” He admitted that Bayliss was on a charge saying, “I was concentrating so hard to keep with him, he was running a really hot pace and we got a gap to the next group. So when he fell the gap was there and I just kept up the pace.”
“I was lucky that Bayliss crashed but I'll take what I can. To win in from of you guys (referring to crowd of race fans) is the icing on the cake,” said a very pleased Toseland.
Second place went to Yamaha Italia's
Troy Corser who got off to a bad start from row two of the grid. The windy conditions continued through race day and it was the wind that had caused Corser's crash in Superpole, “Turn one was very gusty on some laps and the wind caught me a few times on the final corner and pushed me to the outside of the curbs,” he said, “I pushed hard at the beginning as I didn't get a great start. It is hard to make up ground here when we are all so close. I pushed hard and made some aggressive moves. James and Troy were pulling away but once Troy crashed James settled the pace. I settled for second as I didn't want to screw my tyre up. Just wanted to bring it home.”
