Voltcom Suzuki’s Eugene Laverty claimed the first World Superbike victory of the year at Phillip Island, outpacing his old team to bag a comfortable win. The Irishman ended the opening race with a three second lead after reeling in a five-second deficit and was followed home by Aprilia’s Marco Melandri and Sylvain Guintoli
Guintoli got the holeshot, followed by Melandri, and fellow Italian Ducati’s Davide Giugliano. The trio then managed to pull away from the majority of the pack. Ducati’s Chaz Davies had a solid first lap, having started from eleventh and going to sixth, just behind Kawasaki’s Tom Sykes. The Suzukis did not have the best start, with Laverty and Alex Lowes being pushed down the pack. Lowes went as far back as eleventh and was in a battle with Pata Honda's Leon Haslam on lap two.
On only the second lap Sykes went wide and ended up in ninth, allowing his team-mate Loris Baz and Lowes to go ahead of him. But then was there was the battle of the Celts between Laverty and Davies for fifth, but the Welshman just had that extra bit of pace to prevent the Irish lad over-taking him. But by lap six Laverty got the better of Davies and pushed his way up to fourth, overtaking Baz in the process.
But lap four was not a good one for rookie Lowes. He high-sided at Doohan on lap four. He managed to hobble away, having already dislocated his ankle in FP3 yesterday. But he was not the only Brit to fall foul of the Aussie circuit. Haslam crashed at Swan Corner with seventeen laps remaining, but he appeared uninjured at the track side.
Lowes' bike is being bolted back together using a combination of new and old parts while Haslam's Fireblade reporteddy has a bent chassis, so the team face a race against time to put all the unscuffed bits into a new frame.
The front three bikes of Guintoli, Melandri and Giugliano kcontinued to dominate the race, with the two Romans continuingly trying to out do each other for second on the podium, with Laverty only a second behind by lap thirteen. Then seconds later Melandri was overtaken by Giugliano at the Honda Hairpin, and then by Laverty at Siberia, who went into a provisional third place on the rostrum.
Over half race distance completed Sykes was still battling with his young team-mate Baz but the reigning champ had the pace to go through to fifth, but went wide at Honda, and went back down to seventh. Elsewhere on lap fifteen Laverty decided to make his mark, and overtook Giugliano on the straight to go into second. But former MotoGP rider, Melandri crawled his way back to third.
Laverty obviously had enough of following Guintoli and made his move with six laps to go, and started to pull away, from his former team-mate. With three laps left the Monaco based resident had a 1.6 second lead, from the duelling Aprilia duo of Melandri and Guintoli, with the smaller of the two riders going into second at Honda.
On the final lap Laverty extended his lead by three seconds, and cruised to victory in the opening race down under, with Melandri getting the better of Guintoli to finish second and third respectively.
In the end Giugliano was six seconds behind the leading four, followed by Baz and Pata Honda's Jonathan Rea crossing the finishing line in sixth. Sykes was unable to regain his earlier race pace and had to settle for seventh, with Davies ten seconds behind in eighth. But it was not all bad for the Powys based racer, he set a new lap record of 1’30.949, overtaking the time set by Laverty a year ago.
Kawasaki’s David Salom was the leading EVO bike, after he managed to get the better of fellow EVO rider, Althea Racing’s Niccolo Canepa, who rounded off the top ten.
