Checa delighted with double podium
Added on Monday, March 28th, 2011 by Carole Nash Editor
Checa delighted with double podium
Carlos Checa spoke of his delight as he continued his superb start to the World Superbike season with two podiums at Donington Park.
The Althea Ducati rider recovered from a disastrous start in race one, which saw him slip from pole position to eleventh, to recover to third place at Donington ahead of local hero Leon Haslam.
A change of tyres for race two saw Checa dominate from the start, finishing +3.397 seconds ahead of the impressive Marco Melandri, and the veteran rider was more than happy with his weekend’s work.
“In race one I was struggling at the start, I didn’t have feeling with the rear tyre and as a result I lost a lot of positions,” he claimed. “But I have to say it was one of the most exciting races of my career, so many riders touching, crashing, everything!
“After the first laps I was able to build up a good rhythm and start moving up through the pack one rider at a time. It wasn’t easy but I pushed hard and then two laps from the end I realised that I could maybe get past Haslam too for third. I’m really happy because I didn’t think I’d get from 11th on lap one to the podium. We made the decision to use the hard tyre solution for the race and even thought we paid for this at the start it turned out to be the right decision in the end.
“We opted for the softer tyre in race two; we knew it would be very high performing although a bit less so towards the end of the race. It remained pretty consistent but towards the end I had to change my riding a little to manage the situation. My strategy was to get to the front, built up a bit of a lead and then manage that lead and today everything worked perfectly.
“It was great to win at Phillip Island but today meant even more to me. A lot of people may remember what happened to me here many years ago; that day I lost something here but today I can say that I found it again.”
