GoldBet BMW’s Chaz Davies failed to come away with any podium finishes in the World Superbike races at Portimao over the weekend, leaving the rider a bit frustrated with his performance.

Lack of grip proved to be a problem for the Welshman in race one. He started from twelfth place, but lost two positions at the start and had to fight battles in the middle field during the beginning stages of the race. Over the course of the 22-laps he gained positions as his race pace was close to the leaders, but he was too far back to fight for the podium and he finished in sixth place.

In race two the Presteigne rider was feeling a lot better on his RR in comparison to race one. He made a good start and improved from twelfth to eighth soon after the start of the race. He overtook Althea Racing’s Davide Giugliano on lap three to take seventh place and then fought a long battle with Giugliano and Ducati Alstare’s Carlos Checa. On lap twelve he improved to sixth place by passing his struggling team-mate Marco Melandri, and on the penultimate lap Davies overtook Checa to secure fifth place before the chequered flag.

Even though Davies did improve over the course of the weekend he found some aspects of race one frustrating, but overall was satisfied with performance in the final World Superbike race in Portugal.

“Race one was kind of frustrating. My start was not particularly good and for the first few laps I was in the wrong company and I lost a lot of time. It did not ruin my race but it did not allow me to finish in a position that we were capable of,” said Davies.

“In the middle of the race, my pace was not too far off the guys in front so it would have been nice to have gone away with them. In the closing stages we had a drop of performance as we started to lack a little bit of grip, also in the front where we were using the harder front tyre for stability purposes.

“For race two, we took a couple of gambles as honestly we did not have a lot to lose. We changed the front and the rear tyre and also changed the suspension a little bit. And in fact race two was much better than the first. I was much happier with the bike even if I did not quite have the grip that I wanted, especially on the first two laps.

“But then I found some grip from lap three onwards. Again, we have learnt something a little bit too late which is frustrating but in general we showed a better performance in race two. So I would say that I am semi-happy.”