Race 1: Winston Ten Kate Honda rider Karl Muggeridge finished 8th after briefly climbing to fourth position on lap seven in race one at round two of the WSB Championship at a breezy Phillip Island in Australia.

Muggas didn’t start the day very lucky. A high speed crash on his first lap in the wet warm up session this morning, didn’t allow him to go back out as he choose to recover in time for the race instead. Muggas got a bit an average start from his 6th grid position put was able to work his way up to 4th at some stage, however could hold the pace with the way the CBR was handling.

Muggas comments: “That was one of the toughest races I’ve ever done. Our settings just didn’t work today, not sure if it was the gusty winds or the tyre combinations we choose. But I had to push like mad to make it around the corners, which was hard on the tyres. I’m glad I finished 8th and got a few points, as I had to be so careful that I didn’t crash every lap. Obviously I would have liked to go much better and we for sure had the potential but the crash in the morning warm didn’t help the situation either.”

Race 2: The second Race at Phillip Island didn’t go any better for Winston Ten Kate’s Karl Muggeridge with a crash into the hairpin on lap 6 and no points to take home the Australian was quite disappointed after his home round.

Muggas got a better start to begin with but couldn’t keep the drive to get away as the front lifted up and he dropped back into 13th position, which put him in a bad spot right away with everybody fighting really hard to get back to the front. But the team made some changes to the CBR 1000 after the first race and the bike was handling so much better so Muggeridge felt confident for good race with a solid result until the fatal incident.

Muggas comments: “We went all a bit hot into the hairpin, James flew passed me, so I broke hard, suddenly he pulled it across in front of me and left me absolutely no room, I tried as good as I could to lean away from him to avoid him, but then the bike picked itself up and I had no choice than to let go without smashing myself up. It was really unfortunate that my CBR landed on the back of Toseland’s. I feel really sorry for him, but it was a shitty situation and I had nowhere to go. Other than that I felt quite happy out there, the bike felt heaps better than in the race before and I had a good time.”

Half way through the race rain started to come in, and so it had to be stopped with a wet race restart, which was won overall by Troy Corser with his team-mate Kagayama in second and Honda’s youngster Neukirchner in third.