Xerox Ducati's Troy Bayliss finally broke his Donington Park duck in the first World Superbike race this afternoon, taking the win ahead of Rizla Suzuki's Tom Sykes.

The Aussie, who had never won here despite doing two years of British Superbikes with GSE in 1998 and 1999, lobbed it in race two after asking too much of the rear tyre at Schwantz Curve.

"I'm really happy to have finally taken a win at Donington after all the years that I've been coming here," said Bayliss. "Then in Race 2 I was feeling equally good at the start, even though the rain was so heavy I almost thought they might cancel it a couple of laps in. But conditions improved and I felt comfortable so at a certain point, when it looked like Kiyo might have been starting to have a bit of trouble,

"I thought I could push bit harder and try to catch him. Unfortunately though I lost the back at a certain point and came off at a pretty fast speed, though luckily I haven't hurt myself. We've improved on our points lead overall and we leave here with an advantage of 101 points over Corser and 105 over Neukirchner which was our aim for this round so we're all very happy with that."