Fixi Suzuki's Leon Camier ended up a frustrated man at the Phillip Island World Superbike round as tyres issues and getting caught in a second-race incident conspired to remove him from the business end of proceedings.

The former BSB Champion has shown good pace in pre-season testing and practice, and was confident he could make the rear Pirelli last until the end of both races but race one saw it totally destroyed while the Davies/Baz interface in race two saw Camier pushed on to the grass.

“The first race was really difficult and the bike just didn’t feel like anything we’d been working on over the weekend. We really struggled and we made the wrong tyre choice - by the end of the race the tyre was destroyed! This was very strange because all weekend we’d done race runs on the tyres and it hadn’t shown wear like that," said Camier.

"I’d put in good laps on used tyres in the test and during practice, so we were confident that it would work, but whatever the reason is, it didn’t! I got a better start in race two and tried to make some places up early on, but as I tried to go round the outside coming into a corner there was a big crash in front of me and I got taken out and on to the grass – so that was really the end of the race for me!

"The rest of the time was just spent catching up and racing with some other guys. I had to try and do what I could and I could see Jules and Johnny Rea coming back to me really quickly so I kept pushing, but just couldn’t get up to them. It’s frustrating because I felt that in the second race we had the package to challenge the front pack.”