Kenan Sofuoglu explains Toprak Razgatlioglu “need” for French WorldSBK crash
“You need, sometimes, difficult things…”
Toprak Razgatlioglu’s French WorldSBK crash put him out of action for the whole weekend with a collapsed lung, but his manager — five-times WorldSSP Champion Kenan Sofuoglu — thinks that it’s possible there was a “need” for it to happen.
Following his crash on Friday afternoon, Razgatlioglu was taken to hospital for assessments and was diagnosed with a pneumothorax, or collapsed lung.
It kept him out of action in France, but Sofuoglu believes that there was some fortune involved in the incident.
“Toprak [Razgatlioglu] is okay and I’m very happy he is here today,” Sofuoglu told WorldSBK.com on Saturday, after Razgatlioglu’s BMW teammate, Michael van der Mark, had won WorldSBK Race 1 in France.
“Also, everybody knows it was a very scary crash, but I believe it’s very lucky. You need, sometimes, difficult things.
“We had a very nice last 13 races, and we won everything. But, if everything is going too good, I’m personally a bit afraid.
“Hard things arrived, but, if you watch the crash, we feel we have to be thankful because this can be a very dangerous situation. In that crash, Toprak is still healthy, has nothing broken, of course he has some pain but in the end he’s here and even the next day [after the crash] arrived back at the track.
“Only one thing, we couldn’t race this weekend.”
Sofuoglu expects Razgatlioglu not only to be back in action at the next race in Cremona, round nine of the season, in two weeks’ time, but also to be at full fitness.
“I believe [that Razgatlioglu will race at Cremona], personally, because I see last night Toprak in hospital, [then] this morning at the track.
“There was huge improvement, and I believe we still have almost two weeks until the [next] race, and in these two weeks Toprak will be at 100 per cent in the next round.”
Razgatlioglu took a 92-point championship lead over Nicolo Bulega to Magny-Cours, and Bulega crashing out of Race 1 meant that, despite his double race win on Sunday, the Italian still trails in the riders’ standings by 55 points ahead of Cremona.
As a result, and because he expects Razgatlioglu to miss no further races as a result of this injury, Sofuoglu is calm about his rider’s title chances.
“It’s not a problem: we have enough advantage in the championship, and also if you look at Saturday we don’t lose so much points,” Sofuoglu said. “I just believe the championship is a little bit delayed, nothing changed.”
