Courtesy of KRT – Kawasaki Racing Team
Kenan Sofuoglu (Kawasaki Puccetti Racing) recorded his fifth FIM Supersport World Championship race win of the year as the three-time champion extended his championship lead at Jerez in Spain with a start-to-finish victory.
After positive machine development work in the summer break from his team, and hard physical preparation from the rider himself, Sofuoglu was ready to face 19-laps around the 4.423km Jerez circuit, particularly as he was starting from pole position.
With his main championship rival Jules Cluzel out through injury Kenan just had to make sure he finished ahead of Patrick Jacobsen to ensure he extended his championship lead.
At the mid-stage of the race Jacobsen threatened to close in on Kenan’s advantage but upping his pace at a crucial point Sofuoglu widened his leading gap, easing up over the line to finish 1.037 seconds from Jacobsen. Lorenzo Zanetti was third.
Kenan now has 193 championship points, Jacobsen 160 and Jules Cluzel an unchanged 155. These totals give Kenan a 33-point advantage over Jacobsen with only a maximum of 50 points available for any rider from now to the end of the season in Losail.
Kenan lifted his career race wins in WSS to 32, twice as many as the next best rider in the record books Fabien Foret, who was part of the official SRC Endurance team that won the Bol d’Or for Kawasaki this weekend.
Having qualified fourth Marco Faccani (San Carlo Puccetti Racing Kawasaki) rode hard at a hot Jerez to take sixth place in the race and move into the championship top ten, with 53 points.
Christian Gamarino (Team Go Eleven Kawasaki) went eighth today and Dominic Schmitter (Team Go Eleven Kawasaki) 12th.
Kenan Sofuoglu: “Today the tarmac was very warm but I knew this race was very important for me and I had to take maximum points. I knew I could not crash and I took the lead, according to my plan. I stayed with the group behind for around five laps, but after that my plan was to try and go away a little bit. l I knew we were very good on an used tyre. I made a bit of a gap around one second so when Jacobsen came a little bit closer I started to push again. With two seconds of a gap I just rode to maintain it and stay on the bike. We did a lot of work and at Jerez we were fast in every session. We are very happy and today we got the results for all the good work we did in the summer break.”
ASC - Action Sports Connection 