05 Jul 2016 ZIC Superbike 600cc: Ouyang Fu stuns the field

In the previous years, 600cc and 1000cc bikes raced together. In terms of safety this was a risk for the younger and less experienced riders. So since the Spring Race of 2016, the races on Saturday separated the 600cc and 1000cc bikes. Riders must complete the Saturday race and set a lap time among the 34 quickest riders overall, in order to participate in the combined race on Sunday. This allows the younger riders to race in relative safer environment and gives them room to grow.

On 18 June at 12:20 p.m., the 600cc race began. At turn 9, one of the bikes flies off and stops on the grass. The rider lets go of the bike and seems to be okay. On lap 2, one of the bikes falls on the track and the rider gets away quickly.

About the same time, another bike falls on the track at turn 4. The marshals go to help. The rider is standing by the bike s side.

Ouyang Fu maintains his lead while Huang Zhi-Yu and Yuan Ji-Bo try to keep up. The gaps among the trio are just half a second. On lap 5, Ouyang Fu decides it is time to move on and opens up a lead of 1 second over the other two. Then on lap 7, the gap grows to 2 seconds. He soon encounters backmarkers but these seem to actually help him grow his lead over the rest.

In the end, the race was won by Ouyang Fu, with Huang Zhi-Yue in second place, 2.8 seconds behind and  Yuan Ji-Bo taking third place.

After the race, Ouyang Fu said,“Today overall it was very consistent, it felt like my own practice. In the first few laps, Ma Sai s engine blew and left some oil on the track. When I went by I slipped a little bit, so in the following laps I slowed a little there. But overall it was fine.”

Yuan Ji-Bo is also satisfied with today s results. “Yesterday the bike was not set up well, so the qualifying time was a little slow. Last night we made some adjustments to the bike but we had no opportunity to test them. So today I just have to hope for the best. Fortunately I made a good start and stayed with the lead group. From then on some bikes had problems and I got up to a good position. For the first half of the race I did well but I ran into backmarkers in the second half so my speed was not so good. Overall though it was good.”

In the CL2 class, Ao Jian-Bin was third in class. “I am in the modified class and relative to CL1 we are slower. But overall I felt today was okay, coming across problem affected bikes is normal. At turn 4, with Ma Sai s damaged bike, there was some oil on track. We had to be careful through there. Today was very hot and physically very demanding. On lap 5 I could feel myself losing strength, fortunately I got through it with a good result.”