WSS: Yamaha Supersport Misano summary

Crutchlow adds Misano to his list of conquered circuits

With a track both wet and dry and a race red flagged and re-started, it was never going to be a straightforward day for Yamaha World Superbike rider Cal Crutchlow. Having initially dropped back to eighth at the start he showed incredible pace to work back up to lead the race, taking less than two laps to pass the seven riders. He led until a red flag for oil on the track brought the supersport riders back into the pits. As the race re-started Crutchlow shot off to take the lead which he held until lap 18 where second placed rider Eugene Laverty dived underneath having pursued Crutchlow from the off. Two laps later Crutchlow took the lead back in a decisive overtake up the inside of Laverty and powered on to take the chequered flag.

Team-mate Fabien Foret worked hard from his less than perfect grid start spot. Race one saw him close in on the top ten, making up several places leading up to the red flag incident. The Frenchman put his head down in the second heat and put in consistent fast laps, much happier in the dry conditions of the race and eventually took Nannelli for eighth at the chequered flag.

Crutchlow heads for his home race in Donington leading the championship with 160 points ahead of second placed Laverty on 146. Team-mate Foret also holds onto his seventh spot in the standings and heads to the UK with 63 points, just 10 behind 2008 champion Andrew Pitt.

Cal Crutchlow, Yamaha World Supersport Team (1st)

"It was great to come here to Misano and take the win. It's all credit to the team, they did a fantastic job again and we're back to winning form. Let's hope we can continue this, bring it home to Donington and take another victory."

Fabien Foret, Yamaha World Supersport Team (8th)

"It's been a tough race weekend for me. Qualifying wasn't great with the difficult changing weather making it hard to get a good spot on the grid. I put my head down today and worked to get as far up the pack as I could. I'm trying to improve my early laps to stay with the front guys to get back onto the podium."

Wilco Zeelenberg, Yamaha World Supersport Team Manager

"Well! It was an unbelievable race I would say. Again Cal and Eugene were very close. I'm so happy Cal was able to keep some distance between them on the last lap with an incredible 1'38.8 which is 1'3 seconds under the lap record, the pace was amazing. It's going to be hard until the last race! Fabien came from 18th position, so he worked hard. It's tough as we were expecting him to do better and he knows that so the mission is to practice more and get better first and second laps and he'll be up there. We're looking forward to Donington, we can see the hard work the team are doing is paying off."

-credit: yamaha