World Superbike 2008 - Round Eight

World Superbike 2008 - Round Eight - Misano (Spain)

Day 3 Report - KTM

Hot Superstock Race for team KTM Maehr in Misano.

The fifth from ten races in the FIM Superstock 1000 World Cup ended better than the twenty fifth place than the 14-lap reflected for the young Austrian René Maehr and his two cylinder KTM 1190 RC 8.

Maehr had already found a good basic chassis setup for his KTM in the first training session on the 4.18 km long, very curvy racing circuit on the Adriatic, even in temperatures of 35 degrees Celsius. And in the hot Italian summer temperatures the 21-year-old student was able to reduce his training time in the decisive last session on Saturday by a second. With the real aim of gathering important experience with the newly launched RC8 in very tough racing conditions, Maehr went into the heat of the Superstock battle at twenty eighth of 40 riders.

Early race incident
After some of the crash incidents in the opening stages that are so typical for this very hard fought class, the KTM rider was able to overtake some of his four cylinder opponents and finished the race in 25th position. In doing so he was able to put in important test kilometres and gain more valuable experience with the first ever Austrian Superstock racing motorcycle.

What Rene Maehr said after the race
Rene Maehr: "It's not easy to coldly evaluate such a tough race. The 25th place at the end of the day did not really say much about the advancements we were able to make as a team over the weekend. Thanks to a clearly improved basic setup we were able to massively reduce our time in training by 1.5 seconds. I had some bad luck when a crashed bike slid directly in front of me at the beginning of the race. I had to brake hard a swerve to miss it and this immediately created a gap between me and the next group. In this class, that's not possible to narrow over only a few laps. To get right to the point: I am pleased that we could work so well in this extremely hot weather and not have any problems; also that we could significantly improve our speed, especially in the corners. I am not that happy with finishing at place 25 but we will be working to improve on this!"

The next race in the FIM Superstock 1000 World Cup will take place on July 20 in Brno, Czech Republic.

Race result
1.A.Polita (Ducati) in 23’37’’092 in an average of 150,301 km/h; 2.M.Pirro (Yamaha) 1’’471; 3.M.Berger (Honda) 2’’382; 4.Brendan Roberts (Ducati 1098R Xerox Junior Team) 5’’234; 5.X.Simeon (Suzuki) 6’’999; 6.A.Antonelli (Honda) 7’’826; 7.Domenico Colucci (Ducati 1098R Xerox Junior Team) 11’’349….

Championship standings
1.X.Simeon 84 punti; 2.Brendan Roberts 76; 3.A.Polita 67; 4.M.Pirro 63; 5.M.Berger 59.