All in all, we could say that Frenchman Sylvain Guintoli (Aprilia Racing) was the only rider that finished both races of the Portuguese GP with a big smile on his face.
Basically everyone else of the big guys of the 2013 World Sperbike Championship had a good one and a bad one: team mate Eugene Laverty won the second race in style, but had to suffer a DNF in race one because of technical failure affecting his Aprlia RSV4; Italian Marco Melandri (BMW Motorrad Goldbet SBK) took an epic win in Race-1 and then faded away in Race-2 beacuse of a faulty rear tyre; poleman Tom Sykes scored a podium finish in the opening race and then threw it all away in Race-2 with an incedible mistake on sighting lap.
To cut it short, championship leader Guintoli arrived in Portugal with a 4 point lead over Donington’s double winner Tom Sykes and went away from it with a much more reassuring 28-point gap on the Kawasaki man and 39 on Laverty.
Once again, the paddock girls attending the event had some work to do in order to cheer up those who got a little disappointed at one point or the other, but judging by the pics of our usual photo gallery it’s not easy to see they had all it takes to get the job done.
Next up for the WSBK Championship will be the Imola round at the end of the month, so keep an eye on this space for more of the same.