World Superbike / Supersport 2005

The Ducati Xerox Team came away from the eighth round of the World Superbike championship at Brands Hatch in front of a 108,000 crowd with just one podium for Régis Laconi as the two wins went to points leader Troy Corser (Suzuki) and Noriyuki Haga (Yamaha). Laconi finished fifth in the second race, while team-mate James Toseland scored a DNF after stopping with an electrical problem on lap 10 and a seventh place in race 2 after running third until just before half-distance, saying goodbye to any chance of repeating his 2004 title win.

"I'm a bit devastated really" declared Toseland. "We qualified well, had the problem with the bike in first race and then on the warm-up lap the bike had a few vibrations so we changed it on the grid just to be sure. For the first three laps I thought I was pretty comfortable but then I couldn't get the grip down and Troy and Nori just edged away. I was hoping for a mistake because I wasn't stronger than them in any place. I chose the 200 mm tyre, which no one else had gone for, and in hindsight I should've chosen the 190 like the other guys but I felt pretty good with it even though we didn't get the chance to do a full race distance. When the rear tyre starts to go down you've got no traction at the rear entering the corners, that makes the front push even more and you've got to brake earlier. If you do that you get overtaken and that's what happened in race 2. A DNF and a seventh, same results as last year, Brands is frustrating. All these people wanted was to see was a Brit on the podium and they didn't get that today."

"I needed more grip to try and follow these guys from the beginning to the finish of race 1 but they were too fast and so I settled for third" declared Laconi. "We changed a few things on the bike for the second race but it didn't make much improvement and so I just tried to do my best. I didn't make a good start again and it was difficult to pass, everyone was just fighting like it was the last lap! I tried to pass James for third but put the wrong gear in and there was no engine braking and I went wide. After I tried one more time to gain some places but there was not much I could do. All weekend we used a different 190 tyre to everyone, the hardest one, and it was a surprise that we were unable to push harder. We had to try something to improve in race 2 but it just wasn't enough."