Spies shows his class with victory in race 2

Watching Haga slice through the field in race 2 was truly awesome. One thing is for sure in this years WSB championships - it's a fat field. You gotta work super hard for your places after the first lap.

Haga is rising superbly. The 5 way mid race battle for the lead between Haga, Spies, Biaggi, Fabrizio and Haslam is quality and is the sort of action we are sadly unlikely to see in MotoGP this year. It's not fairing bashing, but its great to watch these different riders on different bikes trying to push each other and figure out ways past.

At the mid-point of the race, it looked liked Haga was well set for a double win. But the later stages seemed to favour the 4 cylinder bikes as the Ducati's clearly had less grip left that both Ben Spies and further back Leon Haslam, who came through for a brilliant podium finish. The tyres on the Honda and Yamaha looked in much better condition than Haga's in parc ferme - with Haga claiming after the race that his tyre was totally finished with 5 laps to go.

But the race win went to Ben Spies who timed his move past Haga perfectly and had enough left in the tank to break Haga in the final few laps.

This left the battle for the final podium place to be sorted out in the final 2 laps. By this point Haslam and Laconi had caught Biaggi and Fabrizio. Laconi's late arrival and aggressive moves caught out Biaggi who out braked himself and had to run off track to avoid crashing, limping home in 15th place.

But it was the British pocket rocket who had the grip, race craft and speed to claim the final podium spot. Go Leon.

Like I said last night, if only the TV coverage was up to scratch.

Shinya Nakano is a rider I'd love to see doing well this year. His riding style is totally immaculate and he is one of the riders whose career really suffered as MotoGP switched from 500's to 990's being just outside the chosen few.

Another stand out theme for me in this race is the size of the bikes. Only the Kawasaki and in part the Suzuki, actually look like big bus road bikes. These other bikes are super small compact racing bikes.

Loser of the weekend had to be Shakey Byrne. Poor qualifying and two race crashes. He would have been hoping for so much more, but did just enough to pip Baiggi for disappointment.

Haga by 3 hundredth's in Race 1 at Philip Island

Well a decent first race of the year for WSB with Haga and Neukirchner breaking the field to duke it out in the final laps.

Max Neukirchner looked to have the race in the bag, moving ahead of Haga into Doohan's final time round and being quicker than Haga in the first half of the lap. Haga's strength on the Ducati was the second half of the lap however and he closed right up, but it seemed to be the cool weather and a few spots of rain on the last lap that decided matters.

Running up and over Lukey Heights Neukirchner's Suzuki snapped out of line throwing Max out of the seat allowing Haga to pass. Max regained control and dragged Haga up the straight to close the gap over the line to just 0.032 of a second. Close stuff.

The fortunes of these two couldn't be more different to the other Max. Biaggi got off the line well, not quite getting the holeshot from Johny Rea. But having got away in 2nd place, he was predictably duffed up and fell down the field. In fact it was a rider cutting across Biaggi, causing him to sit up and run wider, that pushed new boy and pole sitter Ben Spies off the track ruining his race.

In stark contrast Haga and Neukirchner pushed through from 13th and 14th on the grid to finish the first lap 2nd and 5th.

Why Biaggi can't seem to race anymore is beyond me and must drive his team manager insane. He settled for 11th place.

But arguably the surprise of the race was the 3rd place finisher Yukio Kagayama. What a dude. His English for my bike is fast is getting better too!

World SuperBike is looking really good this year, as has been said many times. But I have to say the TV coverage is very poor in comparison to MotoGP. Very little on screen info, no on bike pictures, not enough cameras around the track, and pretty poor direction.

Dorna might not be very good at growing the sport and making it more commercially attractive, but they do a much better job of making a TV show out of a race than their SuperBike rivals.

What a shame.

Smrz takes WSB pole in QP1

My Czech is not that great, but I understand the Czech for "where did he come from" is something like "Odkud přišel"

But that might be Russian...

The performance from Smrz to top the time sheets is outstanding, and what is more exciting, it's often the case in racing that those guys who go fast straight out of the box are those who keep going fast.

Meaning Nakano's performance on the new Aprilia is also great news for the series. If Shinya has finally got over OJ out dragging him to the line he'll be right up there.

But with only 1 second covering the top 14 riders combined with the nature of production based Superbikes - the racing is going to be Superclose and only those who can scrap as well as go fast are gunna win.

So that rules out Biaggi then.