World Superbike disappointment for Herefordshire ace Chaz Davies in Portugal (From Hereford Times)

World Superbike disappointment for Herefordshire ace Chaz Davies in Portugal

3:00pm Wednesday 26th September 2012 in Sport

IT was a drastic case of after the Lord Mayor’s show for Chaz Davies at the penultimate World Superbike round in Portugal – his maiden victory followed up by two failures to finish.

Davies admitted to being in a dream world at the last World Superbike round at the Nurburgring – celebrating both his maiden win and a move to a factory outfit in a matter of hours.

However, while Davies finished third and then first in Germany and was announced as one of BMW Motorrad’s new riders for 2013, round 13 at Portimao was as opposite as opposites can be.

Davies was unfortunate in race one as he crashed into his team-mate for next year Marco Melandri while the Italian was attempting to recover from a stumble himself during lap one. And then in race two the ParkinGO MTC Racing rider lost the rear of his bike after four laps while riding in second and played no further part – Davies coming back down from his high with a bump.

However, ParkinGO MTC Racing team manager Giuliano Rovelli is in no doubt Davies will be back out for the last round at Magny Cours on October 7 fighting for a second and potentially third win.

“We are lacking the satisfaction of a good result but team and rider have done the extra step to be able to fight for the top places,” said Rovelli.

“We would like to finish the season with another podium that would be a result we all deserve after the hard job done during our first year in World Superbikes.”

Davies’ fellow Brit Tom Sykes took victory in race one, which started in treacherously wet conditions and he was red flagged at the start of lap seven before a shortened 16-lap restart.

Eugene Laverty then won race two while Davies is currently ranked ninth in the overall standings with 156.5 points – but is 190.5 off the now red-hot favourite to claim the title, Max Biaggi.

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