01 Apr 2015 ZIC Superbike R2: More exciting battle

At 2:15pm on 22 March, 2015 Pan Delta Super Racing Festival Spring Race hosts its second ZIC Superbike race. Yesterday American newcomer Cory West won race 1 with Li Zheng-Peng beating teammate Huang Shi-Zhao for second place. Today's weather is a little more downcast and temperature is down, turns 1-3 is also partly covered with saw dust, will these new factors affect the outcome of the race?

Cory West is again on pole position, Li Zheng-Peng in second place and Huang Shi-Zhao is third. Dan Kruger is starting from fourth today instead of last place as he did yesterday. Will he be able to make it more difficult for West and Li? We shall see.

At the start, Cory West moves away cleanly and beats Li Zheng-Peng to the first corner. Huang Shi-Zhao also makes a good start and tries to overtake Li down at turn 1, but Li is having none of it and denies Huang. Dan Kruger follows them into the first corner.

At the end of lap 1, Cory West continues to lead with Li Zheng-Peng 0.9 sec behind. Huang Shi-Zhao and Dan Kruger are following closely.

On lap 2, two bikes hit each other on the straight between turns 10 and 11, they then bounce off each other and fall on both sides of the track. As their positions are highly dangerous, the race officials call a red flag and stop the race. The marshals then proceed to help the riders away from the track and clear the debris on the track. The riders appear to be okay.

At the re-start, Cory West resumes in the lead with Li Zheng-Peng in pursuit. Dan Kruger makes a good start and is ahead of Huang Shi-Zhao, but this change does not last long as Huang re-takes third place just half a lap later. This quartet soon detach themselves away from the rest of the field.

The main focus is on the battle between Cory West and Li Zheng-Peng. The gap between them is just 0.1 second. On lap 2, Li Zheng-Peng cut into the right side of Cory West and gets in front, to the loud cheers from the grandstand.

Cory West is not giving up without a fight, he closely shadows Li and looks for a way to re-take the lead. He seems to have a small power advantage, maybe due to his bike's slightly bigger engine. But Li Zheng-Peng is defending very well and after two laps he continues to lead by a narrow margin.

But soon they come up against backmarkers. At turn 9, as Li Zheng-Peng passes a backmarker on his left, Cory West sprints out on the right and the riders go side-by-side into turn 10. Li tries to block but Cory West simply moves out a little to the right and re-takes the lead. The two bikes almost touched and this exciting move gets the crowd to stand on their feet.

Now back in the lead, Cory West tries to breakaway. A lap later and Li Zheng-Peng is already 7 lengths behind. That's partly due to a wobble he had around the lap, as he tries to keep up.

On the last lap, Cory West seems unstoppable. Behind him Dan Kruger passes veteran Huang Shi-Zhao for third place. At the chequered flag, Cory West wins his second race of the weekend, Li Zheng-Peng takes second place, 2.2 seconds behind and Dan Kruger finished third.

Race results: http://www.zic.com.cn/en/event_list.php?kind=Race%20results