Just as the Alstare Corona Suzuki squad have been completely dominating the Superbike class the Ten Kate Honda Supersport squad have been imitating their feats in a likewise clean sweep of the Supersport class and early indications at Valencia suggested that trend would show no signs of abating.

Charpentier sprinted away from the grid and immediately started pulling away while his team-mate Katsuaki Fujiwara took a couple of laps to get the better of Fabrizio and Curtain to move up to 2nd position to restore the customary Ten Kate 1-2 running order.

One thing certainly made clear at Valencia was the fact that the Ducati 749 machines do not lack horsepower.  Gianluca Nannelli was more sideways on the gas than I have ever seen a World Supersport machine before.

The Ten Kate men continued to pull away from their pursuers which made the only real action towards the front the battle between Fabrizio and Curtain for 3d place.  Fujiwara was closing on his team-mate though which suggested that as the race progresses the Ten Kate men might just have a battle between themselves for the win.

By the halfway point of the race the Ten Kate men had 7 seconds over the battle for third place and this was also the point of the race where Kevin Curtain managed to squeeze past Fabrizio to take his turn to lead their little duel.

The Ten Kate pair had more than ten seconds over Curtain as they entered the final one-third of the race. Broc Parkes had recovered from a poor start to work his way forward to a hard earned 6th place. Curtain had pulled away from Fabrizio to make 3rd place look relatively safe while Fujiwara started to pressure Charpentier for the lead.

On the final lap Fujiwara tried his move and he touched with his team-mate which nearly ended in disaster but they stayed upright and that touch was enough to give Charpentier the advantage he needed to go on and take the win with Fujiwara bringing home 2nd place for yet another Ten Kate 1-2. Kevin Curtain took the final step on the podium with third place a significant 21 seconds behind the Ten Kate pair.  Who could ever imagine that in a production based series on a control tyre one team could be so thoroughly dominant and show such a huge performance advantage over the opposition. It is clear the rest are simply fighting for third, one wonders how long the other manufacturers stick it out before taking their bat and ball and going home.