Davies escapes carjacking attempt

Factory Aruba.it Racing Ducati WSB rider Chaz Davies was the victim of an attempted carjacking in Barcelona recently, on the day he went to watch a friend compete in an Indoor Enduro event.

As he went to meet friends for dinner afterwards in the centre of the Spanish city an attempt was made to steal his van, with Davies still sitting behind the steering wheel.

“My friends and I had agreed to meet at a Thai restaurant, as right in the centre as you can get. I drove there navigating via google maps and pulled over just to check the map. These two guys went by on pushbikes and I heard one guy say something, then flick his eyes at me and my van. It looked a bit dodgy so I watched them, and they rode off. I went back to my map and the next thing one of these guys appeared again. I did not have the locks on and he grabbed the door handle, got it open about a foot and shouted something. I grabbed the door handle to stop him opening it any more – it was one of those moments where you were not sure which way it was going to go. I had hold of the door with one hand and the guy was pretty strong – so we were to-ing and fro-ing with it. Then I got my two hands on the door and ripped on it as hard as I could to close it. I clicked the locks on, banged the van into gear and went off.”

Davies escaped uninjured from the dramatic incident, before finding an underground car park to secure his van within. “It felt like about half an hour of wrestling with the guy!” said Davies, shaken by the whole thing at the time but later able to make light of what could have been a much more serious incident. “Luckily I think he was half committed, so I think he gave it up. Lucky he did not fully commit and lucky the other guy was not with him. It was not fun at all.”

Davies, like all his WSB peers, is shortly about to head off to the second round of the championship to be held at the all-new venue of Chang International Circuit, near the city of Buriram in Thailand. Raceday is Sunday March 22.

Davies is third in the championship after scoring two third places at the Phillip Island opener in late February.