The Algarve rider Miguel Praia won with his team, made up of Hugo Marchand and Matthieu Lussiana, the Superbike category of the 500 Miles Brazil 2013 and finished in 2nd place overall, after a great fight with the local team, made up of the Brazilian champions.
Right at the beginning of the race, heavy rain took several drivers out of the competition and Praia and his team led until 02:00 of the race.
At that time, his teammate Marchand had a fall, thus dropping to 3rd place.
Praia started his shift in the rain and regained the lead, but soon after, his bike had problems with the gearbox selector and he spent almost five minutes in the box, losing a two-lap lead over the second placed rider.
The last lap was the maximum point of 500 Miles. Hugo Marchand managed to recover the difference he had to Doca, recovering in the last lap the first position. However, halfway through the end, Marchand falls into the 'esses' Senna, handing the overall victory over to the Brazilian team.
The SBK Quality Peças team (Angelo Marcos Canuto and Fernando França) came in third.
“It was frustrating to lose the overall victory when there was only half a lap to go after we had done 184 laps with so much difficulty and terrible time. A bit of everything happened to us but the malfunction in the selector took away an advantage of almost 3 laps but that's how endurance races are. But we won in Superbikes and that ended up giving us the deserved reward, after the disappointment of not having won. My congratulations to the local team and special thanks to Center Moto and Philippe Braga for the opportunity to compete in Brazil. The team was fantastic and I hope to come back.”
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