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Phillip Island WSBK: Laverty wins race two

Factory Aprilia rider Eugene Laverty turned the tables on team-mate Sylvain Guintoli and reversed the race one result to take victory in the second World Superbike race at Phillip Island this afternoon with the pair claiming joint-first inthe points table

The Frenchman led from lap four after passing Tom Sykes with Laverty in his shadow, but he patiently waited his turn to fight for the top spot on the rostrum, which eluded him in race one. The Irishman not only had to contend with challenging his team-mate but also Goldbet BMW’s Marco Melandri.

“We got off on the right foot. All the work from the past few days has paid off. My Aprilia was fast and it performed as I wanted it to from the first to the last lap. In race one I may have been a bit too conservative with the tyres, still taking a nice second place, but in race two I pushed a bit more decisively," said Laverty.

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"At the end, when it was Sylvain, Melandri and me, I tried and was able to get away, shaving a few more tenths off my pace. The track record two laps from the finish was nice confirmation that we turned up to the races in the best possible conditions. 45 points after the first race are some nice spoils. I've never started a season this well and now we'll be thinking about Aragon and how to stay on this path."

The Italian made sure the Aprilias did not have it all their own way with him remaining consistent in third, but on lap 16 Melandri made his move to overtake Laverty to get into second place, as Laverty ran wide at MG and the Italian immediately took advantage of his mistake.

But Laverty was having none of it and re-took second place again on lap 20 and then passed Guintoli in short order to lead the race, and in doing so set the fastest lap of 1’31.168. This is Laverty’s fourth World Superbike victory.

Kawasaki's Sykes started really well and led the group of riders into the first turn, but Sykes could not improve on his pace, or compete with the other riders, and by the time lap seven came around the Englishman dropped to seventh place. But in the dying moment of the race he did manage to overtake Althea Aprilia’s Davide Giugliano to regain fifth position. The Englishman could not stay with the Aprilia machine of Red Devils Roma rider Michel Fabrizio who had another solid race, and finished in fourth place, resulting in three Aprilias in the top five.

Welshman Chaz Davies did not have the start he would have wanted, when on the opening lap he collided with Kawasaki racing’s Loris Baz, which resulted in a punctured tyre. But things went from bad to worse for Davies when had to pit in, only to be given a ride-through penalty because he didn't dismount while mechanics were changing his rear wheel and he went back out again two laps down.

Further down the grid there was the battle of the two Leons. Pata Honda’s Haslam did not have a good opening lap and was down to 16th place by the time lap two came around. Fixi Suzuki’s Camier was forced off-track by the Davies/Baz incident and dropped to as low as 17th place. But throughout the race the two Leons were only tenths of a second apart, and for all of the 22 laps they were battling for that top ten finish.

In the end Camier narrowly pipped Haslam to take ninth place, leaving Haslam having to finish the final race of the day in tenth. Team-mate Jonathan Rea, in his 100th World Superbike race, has a pretty uneventful time as he didn't progress from mid-pack and rode over the line in eighth place.

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