Regis Laconi was missing from the grid as the riders took their respective spots on the Assen racetrack due to a practice crash ruling him out of the rest of this race meeting and also possibly the next which puts his third position in the championship in jeopardy and makes Vermeulen's second place a lot stronger.

Chris Vermeulen took the prime spot at the front of the grid after taking his first ever Superpole yesterday with a stunning 2m04.1 scorcher on the modified Assen layout. Alongside him was reining World Champion James Toseland along with Troy Corser and Noriyuki Haga making it four different manufacturers on the front row. Heading the second row was Karl Muggeridge with Andrew Pitt in sixth spot, Yukio Kagayama seventh and with Steve Martin rounding out the top eight that made it an incredible five Aussies in the top eight qualifiers.

All riders got off the line cleanly and it was Noriyuki Haga who did the best job to take the lead as they entered turn one with Vermeulen and Corser in close pursuit. A couple of turns later Chris Walker had a coming together with another rider and went down with what looked like a possible arm injury.

Vermeulen got his nose in front of Haga for a short while but the Japanese rider got him back and then Troy Corser decided it was his turn to lead the way with Haga, Vermeulen, Pitt and Toseland all in close formation.

James Toseland then started to get a little more aggressive and slipped past Pitt and started to threaten the back of Vermeulen before the Honda man thought better of that and decided to put Haga between him and Toseland by moving past the Japanese rider to take second place. Toseland stole that third place from Haga shortly after while Andrew Pitt lost some ground after running wide and started to come under pressure from Karl Muggeridge. Chris Vermeulen got the better of Corser for the lead late on that lap but went side by side onto the main straight with Corser and it was the Suzuki man who had the edge in to turn one while Toseland took the opportunity to catch Vermeulen by surprise after slipping his Ducati up the inside to take second place. Pitt had closed back on to the group and Karl Muggeridge had added his presence to make the leading group a tight bunch of six.

Toseland then got shuffled back to fourth on the next lap as Vermeulen took the lead one again with Corser behind him and being hounded by Noriyuki Haga. Corser then got demoted to fourth place after Haga and then Toseland got the better of him while Vermeulen had managed to pull a couple of bike lengths on his pursuers to stretch out the biggest lead of the race thus far with five of the 16 laps down.

The exciting battle for second place between Toseland and Haga was helping Vermeulen a little as the Honda man had the benefit of clean air in front of him and not having to run protective lines while his pursuers meted plenty of torture out to their Pirellis in their quest to catch the young Aussie.  Karl Muggeridge appeared to be suffering from some problems in putting the power down and started to lose touch a little with the front pack which had shrunk to five once again in his absence.

By half race distance Vermeulen had more than two seconds on Toseland and Haga who in turn had pulled out two seconds over the fourth place Corser as the field started to string out a little more as the laps wound down. Toseland and Haga having a titanic battle at every turn with both riders sideways more often than not. The place changes had allowed Corser and Pitt to close some ground on the pair while Vermeulen was lapping a second a lap quicker than his pursuers to increase his lead.

With a few laps to run Corser stepped up his efforts to try and join in the Toseland/Haga battle over second place but nobody was going to get near Chris Vermeulen who had built a handsome five second lead by the time they started the penultimate lap of the race. Muggeridge had drifted back to eighth place behind Lorenzo Lanzi. 

Corser couldn't manage to get close enough to challenge for a podium position and had to settle for fourth place ahead of Andrew Pitt. Vermeulen romped home to a convincing win while the battle for second place was waged all the way to the flag but it was James Toseland who took that second step of the podium after getting the better of Noriyuki Haga in the closing stages of the race.