The first race of the 2019 Superbike World Championship took place this afternoon at the Phillip Island circuit in Australia. Having qualified tenth in the morning’s Superpole, rider Leon Camier started the race from the fourth row of the grid, with the aim of making up ground and demonstrating the kind of pace that had allowed him to finish the free practice sessions very close to the top five.

Unfortunately, on lap nine of the twenty-two lap race, and having set his fastest lap of 1’31.782 that saw him pass Cortese, Laverty and Davies and move up to ninth place, the Brit suffered a crash at turn 2. The incident prevented him from improving further and put a premature end to his race.

On his return to the Superbike category, Ryuichi Kiyonari qualified in 17th and crossed the line sixteenth in Race 1, just missing out on the points zone.


Ryuichi Kiyonari 23 - 16th

“The positive thing is that we finished the race, the not so positive is our position of course. I was really aiming to finish inside the points zone today. Anyway, we have gained experience and have a lot of data that we can use in order to try and improve tomorrow. After today’s race, I better understand how to manage the tyres, especially towards the end because today I struggled a lot there and couldn’t defend my position in the final stages of the race.”

Leon Camier 2 - DNF

“The crash honestly is hard to understand because I didn’t do anything different there, and I just lost the front through turn 2. It’s frustrating as I was feeling really good on the bike. I felt it was working even better than I expected it to in the race, and I definitely had the pace of the guys I was running with. I had just passed Chaz (Davies) and was catching Melandri and Van Der Mark, and my pace was pretty decent. Starting from tenth on the grid makes it more difficult of course, and it wasn’t easy to pass Chaz, but I think that ultimately I could have been in the group with Marco (Melandri). I don’t know how the tyre would have lasted, but I don’t think it would have been too bad. Anyway, now we need to concentrate on tomorrow.”