Checa Crashes After Engine Problem

Carlos Checa suffered a fast crash on the Moscow Raceway straight in wet conditions when the rear tyre of his Ducati Alstare Panigale 1199 locked up and eventually spat him off, landing him hard on his hip, shoulder and head.

Ducati SBK racing boss Ernesto Marinelli said that that the exact reason for the crash was as yet unknown but confirmed that it appears to have been an engine problem.

“It looks like we had an engine failure that we need to investigate so we need to open the engine.” He continued, “You can pull in the clutch and the wheel is free and the gearbox seems to be OK, so we need to investigate. Carlos could not pull the clutch in because sometimes things are happening really quickly.

From the outside of the engine everything looks good, then when you pull the clutch and try all the gears everything looks OK. But then when you try to engage the gears the engine is locked so it must be something on the first part of the engine. We need to open it and check it. I think we need to take it back first because here we do not have all the tooling we need to split the engine completely apart, normally that is something you do in the workshop, but we have spare engines.”

Checa went to Clinica Mobile immediately after the crash where his ability to take any further part in this weekend will be assessed. 

“Carlos hit his head quite hard but there was no concussion, he was conscious the whole time,” confirmed Marinelli. “His eyes were responding correctly and I spoke to Doctor Corbascio and he said that everything looks fine. I walked out of the medical centre with Carlos and he was normal.”

Davide Giugliano (Althea Aprilia Racing) also had a hard and fast fall, and gashed his left elbow, so he should be ready to continue to Superpole, having finished regular qualifying second, thanks to his dry lap time set on Friday.