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Buis Scores A Podium At An Overheated Imola
The 2023 FIM Supersport 300 World Championship returned to action at Imola in front of a weekend crowd of over 50,000 enthusiastic and overheated fans. The top Kawasaki rider over the two races was 2020 World Champion MTM Kawasaki rider Jeffrey Buis, who took third place in Race One on Saturday 15 July.
The most recent WorldSSP round had also been held in Italy, at Misano on the Adriatic coast in June. The undulating inland circuit of Imola, forming an integral part of the town’s main public park, presented a very different challenge from the flat layout everyone experienced at Misano.
Air temperatures in each Imola race were 91.4°F and 98.6°F respectively, making the full distance 13-lap races around the three mile circuit, a true challenge to each rider’s stamina and concentration as much as their riding skills.
In Superpole qualifying, Kawasaki rider Petr Svoboda was the best Ninja 400 rider, in third place. Team Flembbo PI Performance Kawasaki riders Julio Garcia and Kevin Sabatucci, and Team 109 Kawasaki rider Alessandro Zanca were fourth, fifth and sixth, respectively.
Before Race One, which was set off at 12.40 on Saturday, the anticipation was high for another multiple rider fight for the race win. Two riders, Matteo Vannucci and Dirk Geiger, had other ideas and battled only with each at the checkered flag after breaking away from a huge chasing group. Eventual third place rider Buis was involved in a typical multiple rider WorldSSP300 battle, with places and track positions changing with bewildering regularity. Jeffrey used all his experience as a World Champion to hold off another Kawasaki rider, Jose Luis Perez Gonzalez, across the line by just 0.217 seconds. Sabatucci placed sixth, Frenchman Prodina Kawasaki rider Samuel Di Sora was ninth and British Kawasaki GP Project rider tenth Fenton Seabright . Fast qualifier Garcia was 11th, making it six Kawasaki riders inside the top 11 places.
Race Two, which was the final contest of all the regular classes at Imola, did not start until 3:15 on Sunday, offering up a different and even hotter experience for the ambitious young WorldSSP300 riders to deal with.
Vannucci and Geiger would battle for the race win again, with Humberto Maier third and having been part of the leading group for a while. Buis was again the fastest Kawasaki rider, but he was to finish one place off the podium this time, in fourth overall, with an advantage of 0.314 seconds over the next rider. Perez Gonzalez led a running flush of four Kawasaki riders home, with the Spanish heading up Sabatucci, Svoboda, and Misano double race winner, Bruno Ieraci. 2023 season rookie Loris Veneman of MTM Kawasaki secured 15th, scoring a single point in Race Two after no-scoring in Race One.
In the championship points standings Geiger leads with 116 and Vannucci is second with 99. Assen double race winner Svoboda is the top Kawasaki rider, third, with the same 95 points total as fourth placed Mirko Gennai. Perez Gonzalez is overall sixth with 90 points, Buis is seventh with 83 points and Di Sora eighth with 72.
Kawasaki leads in the Manufacturer’s Championship at the halfway point of the season, with 170 points to Yamaha’s 147.
The next round takes place between July 28-30, at the home round of the current highest ranked Kawasaki competitor Petr Svoboda - Autodrom Most in the Czech Republic.
