Marco Melandri has taken a contentious win in the second World Superbike race of the day at Magny-Cours, seemingly defying an order from the team to move aside for Sylvain Guintoli.
The Italian took the lead of a chaotic race on lap 12 when Guintoli made an error into the Adelaide hairpin and was leading with two laps to go when Aprilia put out a message for him to move over in favour of his title challenging team-mate.
However, though Melandri would adhere to the order in race one to gift Guintoli the win, he would not follow suit in race two as he held firm to complete his third win in four races.
Claiming to have not seen the order for Melandri to move over, Guintoli’s second still sees him close the gap to Sykes, who could only manage a distant fourth place finish, the pair now split by 12 points heading into the final round.
A dramatic round of high attrition, just ten riders would complete the race on the same lap as many suffered tumbles or technical difficulties brought onbmy falls in the wet earlier in the day.
From the start it was front row sitter Jonathan Rea that scolded into the lead on the PATA Honda through the first bends, though he would find himself overtaken by Davide Giugliano, the Italian looking to make up for his crash in race one.
However, Giugliano’s race would last until just lap three when he suffered his second fall of the day, this time on the exit of Nurburgring, this hapless Italian forced out on the spot.
Gifting the lead back to Rea, the Ulsterman attempted to string out the pack and in doing so established a lead group of himself and both Aprilia riders, Melandri leading Guintoli initially before the Frenchman moved ahead of his team-mate on lap six.
Sykes, meanwhile, couldn’t contend with the pace out front, settling into a relatively long fourth place, with only a fairly distant Leon Haslam for company and the chasing pack several seconds adrift in their own battle.
However, the race would be turned on its head when Rea, having looked composed on the PATA Honda, suffered an almost identical tumble to Giugliano, losing the front-end on the exit and sliding into retirement.
His exit duly promoted Guintoli into a lead he would only maintain for a single lap when an error into the Adelaide hairpin allowed Melandri in front.
With seven laps of the race remaining, a cautious Guintoli opted not to attack Melandri in the hope the team would issue a similar order to that of race one. However, while the order came, Melandri entered the final lap looking unlikely to adhere to it on this occasion.
Subsequently continuing on to victory, his fourth win in six races, Melandri’s win means Guintoli cannot win both races in Qatar and win the title, regardless of where Sykes finishes. Melandri, meanwhile, is mathematically out of title contention.
Behind them, Sykes would spend his race struggling with front-end grip and though Rea’s demise would promote him to third initially, a charging Haslam would get the better of him in the closing stages, the British rider securing his first podium since Misano 2012 and his first rostrum as a PATA Honda rider.
It means the Kawasaki rider takes a significantly slimmed margin of 12 points into the final round at Qatar next month, a circuit that hasn’t featured on the WSBK calendar since 2009.
In addition to Rea and Giugliano, other high-profile exits included Alex Lowes and Eugene Laverty, who both crashed whilst running inside the top ten and technical issues for Xavi Fores and Toni Elias.
It duly paved the way for Lorenzo Lanzi and Max Neukirchner to inherit fifth and sixth place finishes, the two WSBK veterans on their wildcard outing for 3C Ducati scoring their best WSBK results since 2010 and 2009 respectively.
Having shown good pace in race one, Loris Baz was a laboured seventh in race two, more than a minute off the lead, while Claudio Corti’s eighth place marks the best result yet for the MV Agusta F4. Similarly to Baz, Chaz Davies endured a struggling race, finishing down in ninth and even then only benefitting massively from attrition rates.
Indeed, the attrition rate took its toll on the EVO class especially with Sylvain Barrier, Jeremy Guarnoni and Bryan Staring all crashing out of the lead before Niccolo Canepa came through to secure the spoils in 10th overall.
Fabien Foret, meanwhile, secured another points’ finish in his final WSBK race, while Gabor Rizmayer and Imre Toth secured 12th and 13th place finishes despite finishing two laps adrift.
