World SuperSport 2002 - Round 6 - Silverstone

James Whitham won an action-packed sixth round of the World Supersport championship, despite crashing before the race had finished!

Whitham was leading the 19-lap race when a heavy rainstorm forced organisers to stop the race on lap 14. Before the race was stopped both Whitham and his Yamaha team-mate Paolo Casoli crashed out, leaving Honda's Karl Muggeridge in the lead.

But, within a lap, the red flag appeared and when the race result was taken from the previous, fully completed, lap it was Whitham who was celebrating the fourth World Supersport win of his career.

Casoli picked himself out of the gravel to be awarded second place with Muggeridge taking his first podium of the year with third. Muggeridge said: "It was very difficult to hang on out there. By the time the heavy rain started to fall we were racing through huge puddles. I know that I could have been declared the winner but I think it was a sensible decision to stop the race."

Former world champion Jorg Teuchert won a three-way battle for fourth, leaving early race leader Iain MacPherson fifth and Katsuaki Fujiwara sixth. Seventh place for Fabien Foret on the Ten Kate Honda meant he closed the gap to series leader Stephane Chambon by one point as the Suzuki-riding Frenchman finished eighth.

Kawasaki's Andrew Pitt, the defending world champion, sat five points off the lead of the series prior to Silverstone but a crash and consequent retirement from the race has opened a 10-point gap from second-placed Foret to Pitt. Chambon sits three points ahead of Foret as the Supersport series reached halfway.