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Haslam, Haga Share Wins in Valencia

This weekend's Superbike event at Valencia offered the Spanish fans two entirely different races, as Leon Haslam and Noriyuki Haga each went home with one win apiece following the Sunday action. The first race saw a dominant win from the leader of the overall classification, with Haslam also benefiting from an early technical problem from Carlos Checa.

The MotoGP and Superbike veteran got into the lead early on, but his bike was not up to the task of winning a second race this season. Following the Spaniard's retirement, the Valencia skies opened up for the Suzuki rider, who rode comfortably to his second win of the season, ahead of Aprilia's Max Biaggi.

Third overall was World Superbike champion and series' returnee James Toseland, who scored his first podium since coming back to WSBK action in 2010. Troy Corser also scored a premier result of his own, as he finished on 4th place with BMW Motorrad, his highest finish since joining the team last year.

The second race saw a much closer battle for the win, as Haga, Biaggi and Checa battled it until the last straight. After only 3 laps, the race was red-flagged by the organizers following some early high-speed crashes from Simon Andrews and Vittorio Iannuzzo, with the former suffering left foot and heel fractures in the process.

Once the race resumed, the aforementioned trio started battling for the win, with Haga taking the chequered flag only 0.025 seconds ahead of Checa, while Biaggi had to settle for 3rd place (0.0299 from the Japanese rider).

The outcome of the Valencia weekend in the overall classification is that Haslam further extended his lead to 18 points in the riders' race (from Biaggi), while Carlos Checa sits some 43 points behind in 3rd place.
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