The Althea Racing Team have already secured four championship titles, scooping the Superbike rider’s and manufacturer’s titles and the Superstock 1000 rider’s and manufacturer’s titles in spectacular style, and all in the space of a few hours, at the recent Magny-Cours round.
The squad, still on an emotional high after such a successful 2011, hope to close the season in similar style and all three of Althea Racing’s riders, Carlos Checa, Davide Giugliano and Lorenzo Baroni, will be aiming for the top at the closing round of the respective championships, taking place at Autodromo Internacional do Algarve this coming weekend.
Checa, in his last appearance at the Portimao track late last year, just missed out on the podium, finishing both races in fourth position. He will certainly be looking to improve on that this time around. He will be joined in the garage this weekend by Davide Giugliano who, having taken the STK 1000 title for Althea at the previous round, will wildcard in the SBK category for the same team. Ernesto Marinelli, SBK Project Director for Ducati will return to his role of race engineer to support Davide in the Althea garage over the weekend.
Lorenzo Baroni will hold down the fort in the STK 1000 category, looking to improve on his overall points total. Currently lying in sixth position in the standings, mathematics shows that he cannot reach fifth but he will nevertheless be doing his best to finish the year in the best possible way.
The Althea Racing Team will formally receive the championship trophies at Sunday’s championship prize-giving ceremony.
Carlos Checa
“I won’t be changing anything this weekend, even if the situation has changed slightly in that I’ve won the title. The challenge for me is to treat this like any other race. I will be a little more relaxed of course but not too relaxed! I really like the track and think that we arrive there with the right ingredients to be able to make two great races. I will give it my all in order to take the greatest possible satisfaction at the end of the day. If we can win one of the races that that would of course be the perfect end to what has been, for me, a perfect season.”
