Report - Karl Muggeridge

WSB Donington 1st April, 2007
Weather: sunny R1: 9°C, R2: 13°C
Track: dry, R1 15 °C, R2 21°C
Spectators: 51’000 (Weekend attendance)

Race 1:
Alto Evolution Honda’s Karl Muggeridge finished the first race with an 11th place here at round 3 of the World Superbike Championship at Donington Park, UK.

Muggas had problems getting away from the grid and lost 4 position at the start and then for the first 6 laps he was really struggling bad with grip problems, it felt as if he had cold tyres, it was like riding on ice, after a while it recovered a little bit, but by then the front runners had left.

Muggas comments: “Well we got to finish the second race for this year, that’s a start although the bike didn’t behave the way it should. We had some balance problems with the tyre and then we also started to get some electrical problems in the race which made life a bit difficult. Anyway we’ll make some changes for the second race and fingers crossed it will work out”

James Toseland took victory at his home track in front of Corser and Biaggi after reigning World Champion Troy Bayliss crashed out on lap 6 and hurt himself, so he won’t be able to start the second race.

Race 2:

Honda CBR rider Karl Muggeridge finished the second race of round 3 of the World Superbike Championship with a good 9th position and taking some important points on his account.

After the first race some big changes were made to the bike and Muggas took a bit of a gamble with also putting on the HRC electronic package, which they haven’t tested before, so they didn’t really know what to expect. Muggas didn’t get a great start, also due to that he didn’t really know where he was at with the new electronics, but the bigger problem was that he was struggling again with grip on the rear; the only positive thing was that it didn’t get worse throughout the race.

Muggas comments: “We obviously hoped for better results, but realistically it’s were we are with the development of the bike. We got two solid results today and some points, the great part is we actually got to finish 2 full race distances and have now some important data to improve the bike for next time! I’m pretty happy with the weekend, we hovered around 9th all weekend and to finish 9th in the second race was kind of a plus.”

Yamaha Italia’s Nori Haga took his first win of the season in front of Suzuki’s Max Biaggi and team mate Troy Corser.

Troy Bayliss didn’t start into the second race due to his hand injury and James Toseland was forced to retire due to a technical problem on lap 4.