By David Datzer continued today his Horice Superbike supremacy, winning in majestic fashion the opening Superbike race.
Erno Kostamo got the hole shot at the races’ start before the ever-jovial Datzer overhauled him at lap one’s conclusion.
Despite Kostamo’s best efforts, from here he couldn’t stop the Datzer juggernaut from pulling clear.
Over two seconds ahead by lap four, Kostamo (38 Motorsport/Penz 13 – BMW) who on this lap recorded a major new PB Horice lap time of 2:12.919, nibbled a bit into the race leaders’ advantage across lap five, reducing his deficit to 1.9 seconds.
If Datzer was starting the feel any pressure it did not show and on laps six, seven, he cranked up the pace, successively surpassing the outright lap record, registering lap times of 2:12.692, 2:12.323 seconds. This boost of speed, effectively broke Kostamo’s challenge.
As the tenth, final lap dawned, the gap between Germany, Finland’s quickest Mountain Course exponents was 4.601 seconds.
The race was then red flagged following an incident involving IRRC SBK Championship leader Come Geenen.
Geenen at the time, held P3 in front of Switzerland’s Lukas Maurer with Didier Grams, Luca Gottardi completing the top six.
With more than fifty percent race distance covered, the provisional race result was declared via positions on lap eight, Datzer P1, Kostamo P2, Maurer P3, Grams P4, Gottardi P5.
Johannes Schwimmbeck, Tomas Toth, Rhys Hardisty, Laurent Hoffmann, Florian Astner wrapped up the SBK Race 1 top ten.
Words by Stevie Rial #dontletfearcontrolyou
