WORLD WRAP: Rea back on top in WorldSBK

Superbike World Championship

Jonathan Rea and Chaz Davies have each taken their first wins of 2018 in Round 2 of WorldSBK in Thailand.

Rea took an ultimately comfortable victory in Race 1 after shaking off an early challenge from factory Kawasaki team-mate Tom Sykes.

Xavi Fores (satellite Barni Ducati) achieved a personal-best finish of second and Chaz Davies (Aruba.it Ducati) rounded out the podium.

Race 2 went Davies’ way after he moved up from seventh on the grid to lead on Lap 8 of 20 before gapping Michael van der Mark.

Van der Mark took the chequered flag in second, ahead of Pata Yamaha team-mate Alex Lowes, while Rea took over the championship lead despite an untidy race to fourth.

Previous points leader Marco Melandri (Aruba.it Ducati) finish eighth and seventh across the two races, while Eugene Laverty (Milwaukee Aprilia) broke his pelvis in a crash during the Sunday race.

Australian Ant West finished sixth in the Supersport World Championship race.

Both championships resume at Aragon, Spain on April 13-15.

Asia Talent Cup

Billy van Eerde was the best of the Australians as Haruki Noguchi won both races in Round 2 of Dorna feeder series the Idemitsu Asia Talent Cup at Buriram.

Race 1 saw van Eerde come out on top in a 10-bike battle for third, with 12th position taking the chequered flag less than 2.1s further back, while Noguchi hung on to victory in a contest with Mario Aji which went down to the final corner.

Van Eerde and Noguchi touched elbows on the run to the finish line in Race 2 before the Japanese rider took victory by just 0.005s.

Noguchi leads the championship by 25 points over van Eerde, with the other Aussies Senna Agius 12th and Ben Baker 20th.

Agius collided with Naoki Yamada before finishing ninth in Race 2, while Baker was 14th and a DNF respectively.

Round 3 supports the Malaysian Superbike Championship at Sepang on July 27-29.

Highlights: Race 2

Pirelli World Challenge

The R. Ferri Motorsport pairing of Toni Vilander and Miguel Molina has won both races in the Pirelli World Challenge SprintX event at Circuit of the Americas.

After Vilander ran second in his stint in the Saturday race, Molina brought their Ferrari 488 home to a 5.5s victory over the CRP Racing Mercedes-AMG GT of Daniel Morad and Fabien Schiller.

In the Sunday race, Molina took the lead on Lap 2 and the #61 Ferrari was not headed again, but for pit stops.

The series is next on-track supporting the Long Beach IndyCar race on April 13-15.