CARL Fogarty had a face like a wet weekend after round five of the World Superbike championship at the Nurburgring on Sunday.
The Blackburn ace struggled with appalling wet conditions to finish 13th in both races and stand 26 points behind championship leader Aaron Slight.
Castrol Honda's Slight and Italian Ducati rider Pier-Francesco Chili won a race each.
Slight won the opening 21-lap race from team-mate Colin Edwards as the Castrol Honda pair dominated in the wet conditions.
Edwards led from the start until Slight made his move four laps from the end to win by 6.6 seconds.
"Starting from row two I knew I would have to fight my way through and that it would be a hard race," said Slight.
"Troy Corser and Akira Yanagawa held me up while Colin (Edwards) pulled away but luckily the gap wasn't too much by the time I was into second place."
Chili finished a lonely third with Yanagawa fourth and Noriyuki Haga fifth.
But Chili was rampant in race two, taking advantage of heavy rain around the 2.829-mile track to revel in the conditions. Slight looked to have second place guaranteed until he crashed in spectacular fashion at the end of the 16th lap.
The gritty New Zealander remounted and eventually crossed the line in fourth place, to the delight of the 33,000 crowd. Edwards repeated his first race performance to finish second, holding off Corser whose third place maintains his lead of the championship.
Burnley's Neil Hodgson did not finish the first race, after crashing out on the Bit Kurve on the seventh lap. Hodgson had recovered from a poor start to take ninth place after finishing the first lap in 14th.
He said: "I had just started braking when the front end tucked under and off I went sliding down the track and into the gravel trap.
"I usually make a good start by adopting a cautious approach but I overdid it this time."
Hodgson recovered to finish 11th in race two.
He added: "I had a real problem with aquaplaning. I couldn't see a thing for much of the race and there wasn't anything I could do about it."
RESULTS; Race one: 1 Aaron Slight, New Zealand (Castrol Honda) 40m 31.963s, 2 Colin Edwards, USA (Castrol Honda) 40m 38.571s, 3 Pier-Francesco Chili, Italy (Ducati) 40m 44.399s, 4 Akira Yanagawa, Japan (Kawasaki) 40m 48.640s, 5 Noriyuki Haga, Japan (Yamaha) 41m 16.167s, 6 Peter Goddard, Australia (Suzuki) 41m 16.448s, 7 Troy Corser, Australia (Ducati) 41m 16.708s, 8 Piergiorgio Bontempi, Italy (Kawasaki) 41m 28.196s, 9 Jamie Whitham, GB (Suzuki) 41m 31.259s, 10 Alessandro Gramigni, Italy (Ducati) 41m 31.482s. RACE TWO: 1 Pier-Francesco Chili, Italy (Ducati) 40m 48.961s, 2 Colin Edwards, USA (Castrol Honda) 41m 00.078s, 3 Troy Corser, Australia (Ducati) 41m 00.886s, 4 Aaron Slight, New Zealand (Castrol Honda) 41m 23.850s, 5 Akira Yanagawa, Japan (Kawasaki) 41m 26.291s, 6 Gregorio Lavilla, Spain (Ducati) 41m 44.833s, 7 Noriyuki Haga, Japan (Yamaha) 41m 52.440s, 8 Peter Goddard, Australia (Suzuki) 42m 03.448s, 9 Piergiorgio Bontempi, Italy (Kawasaki) 42m 10.888s, 10 Jamie Whitham, GB (Suzuki) 42m 12.286s.
CHAMPIONSHIP points after five of 13 rounds: 1 Corser 160, 2 Slight and Chili 144, 4 Haga 143, 5 Edwards 138, 6 Fogarty 134, 7 Yanagawa 79, 8 Goddard 71, 9 Whitham 63, 10 Neil Hodgson, GB (Kawasaki) 50. NEXT ROUND: Misano, San Marino - June 21
Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.
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