After the chaos of this morning cancelled first World Superbike encounter, Kawasaki's Tom Sykes took a runaway win in the second leg, lapping a second faster than the field to pull out an massive lead only for rain to fall again, bringing out the red-flags again.
It was Sykes' first win of the year after a succession of pole positions but he only gets half points because the race had not reached two-thirds distance, so a full result is not declared but the Huddersfield man retains his third place in the title race.
As the lights went out following some more pre-race arm-waving, no-one saw where Sykes went, pulling a 1.4s gap in the first half of a lap, which he increased to 3.7s a lap later and then increased it again to 5.2s by the time he reached Ascari for the third time.
In the fight for the podiums, Eugene Laverty hauled his works Aprilia into second on lap three, passing his team-mate Max Biaggi on the brakes into turn one while Leon Haslam went past seven riders on lap one and another hatful on lap two before going into third on lap four, demoting team-mate Marco Melandri and Biaggi on the brakes into the first chicane.
He then set off after Laverty and bagged second down the start/finish straight but even Haslam, with electric knees in full effect, could do nothing about Sykes' pace before the heavens opened and the front runners waved their arms to signify rain on the exit of Lesmo.
Melandri stayed ahead of Biaggi for fourth while Jonathan Rea, who was lapping faster than both Haslam and Laverty, had to settle for sixth. Seventh-placed Carlos Checa sees the gap to title leader Biaggi increase by 100 per cent to two points with Davide Guigliano, Jakub Smrz and Ayrton Badovini rounding out the top ten.
Chaz Davies finished in 12th with Leon Camier taking the final point scoring position. Poleman Sylvain Guintoli's Effenbert Ducati stopped working on one of the many warm-up laps while John Hopkins has a suspected broken foot after his first-race crash in the Parabolica.
