Effenbert Ducati's Sylvain Guintoli splashed around the Assen circuit this afternoon to take his debut World Superbike win in a race of atrition that was red-flagged at just after half-distance due to the amount of rain that came out of the sky in just a few seconds.
At the re-start, BMW's Leon Haslam and Jonathan Rea's pulled a huge lead in the space of two corners but Rea lost the rear of his Fireblade, handing Haslam a seven-second gap over reigning champion Carlos Checa, which he increased by lapping three seconds faster than the field.
It came to nought, however, as the Derbyshire man slid off with seven of the nine laps left to go and Checa took up the reins with Ayrton Badovini in his tracks. Guintoli had got used to the conditions and started to put in fast times an creep up the leaderbard.
BMW Italia's Badovini went under Checa when the Spaniard made an error but the Italian was then pinged off his S1000RR a couple of corners later with Guintoli taking advantage of the errors to bag the lead. Checa's team-mate Davide Guigliano took second from his squadron leader while Eugene Laverty went past fellow Aprilia man Max Biaggi for fourth.
On the last lap, Guintoli had some clear track but Biaggi wasn't going to follow his younger compatriot over the line, going past halfway through the lap for fourth. Checa left it until the final corner to pass his team-mate but Guigliano got better drive on the exit to take his first podium.
Laverty ended behind Biaggi in sixth with Michel Fabrizio, Jakub Smrz, Nico Canepa, Marco Melandri and Lorenzo Zanetti rounding out the top ten. Chaz Davies crashed unhurt early on while Leon Camier went down on the warm-up lap, highsiding while trying to get some heat into his tyres.
Tom Sykes didn't re-start after his engine gave up in the first part of the race. The Huddersfield man had been leading until the blow-up but didn't get off track immediately, coming in for criticism from Jonathan Rea for staying on the circuit until he was given the meatball flag.
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