A decisive move with four laps remaining has given Northern Ireland’s Eugene Laverty victory in the second World Superbike race at Phillip Island’s season-opening round on Sunday.
Aprilia’s Laverty sat behind first race winner teammate Sylvain Guintoli for most of the race, even dropped back to third behind Marco Melandri (BMW) at one stage – before making his move and streaking ahead in setting a new lap record of 1m 31.168secs a short time after on the resurfaced track.
Guintoli finished 0.418s behind Laverty after 22 laps, while Melandri – who crashed in race one after being taken out by Ducati’s Carlos Checa, who was hospitalised following the incident – completed the race in third.
Michel Fabrizio finished fourth, with the top eight rounded out by Tom Sykes (Kawasaki), Davide Giugliano (Aprilia), rookie Jules Cluzel (Suzuki) and Jonathan Rea (Honda).
Australian pair Glenn Allerton (BMW) and Jamie Stauffer (Honda) were 12th and 13th respectively in race two.
Laverty and Guintoli lead the championship on 45 points apiece, ahead of Fabrizio (29), Sykes (22), Melandri (16) and Rea (16).
The next round will be held in Aragon, Spain from April 12-14.
A total of 61,500 spectators attended this year’s round over the three days, during which the Victorian government committed to a three-year contract extension for the event until 2017.