Factory Yamaha's Ben Spies has cruised to his first double win of the 2009 World Superbike season at Qatar this afternoon, taking his total to three victories out of four and taking the first ever clean sweep at the desert track. Not bad for a rookie.
The reigning AMA Superbike Champion made light work of the opposition, leading by up to four seconds in the last third of the race before knocking off the throttle and crossing the line with a 1.2s lead.
Xerox Ducati's Noriyuki Haga grabbed second place from Aprilia's Max Biaggi in a carbon copy of this morning's first race result. Ten Kate Honda's Ryuichi Kiyonari found some pace in the second leg to finish fourth while Britain's Tom Sykes finally got his YZF-R1 off the line successfully and finished fifth.
Spies was beaten off the line by both Haga and Biaggi with the Italian leading but Haga was quickly past and trying to make a break. The American went past Biaggi on lap four and set off after the Ducati, eventually going past with 13 laps left.
Then Spies applied the pressure, piling on fastest lap after fastest lap, including the lap record of 1'59.041, and just disappeared into the distance.
Team-mate Sykes got into a good early rhythm and managed to hang onto the back of Kiyonari as he pushed his up to the back of Max Biaggi but the Huddersfield youngster couldn't quite stick with Japanese's pace. However, he was only five seconds behind come the chequered flag.
Ten Kate Honda's Jonathan Rea got a blistering start from the fifth row and found himself into the top eight early on but seemed to lose his tyres mid-distance and had to settle for eighth.
Leon Haslam gave himself a lot of work to do again in race two, not making up any positions in the first couple of laps, but the former HM Plant Honda man then got his head down with some consistent lap times, hauling himself up to tenth before being beaten across the line by Ruben Xaus by four one-thousandths of a second.
Sterilgarda Ducati's Shane Byrne started well, dropping into fourth at the first corner but the reigning British Superbike Champion couldn't live with the pace and scythed his way backwards, eventually being passed by Haslam in the closing stages.
Althea Honda's Tommy Hill suffered technical difficulties early on in the second leg, pulling into the pits with 12 laps to go.
