England and Ten Kate had taken victory honours in the opening Superbike race of the year and a Ten Kate bike led the Supersport field away in their opener but ran in a little too deep into turn one and it was Katsuaki Fujiwara on the Italia Megabike Honda that led the field through turn one for the first time.  It didn't take too many corners though before Sebastien Charpentier took his customary position up front, Fujiwara and Curtain tucked in behind.  Josh Brookes had only qualified on the seventh row but a storming opening lap from the young Australian saw him up to 11th place before the end of the first lap.  Anthony Gobert had not fared quite so well and was trying to fight his way forward from 22nd position.  Broc Parkes went out of the race for some reason.

Sofuoglu had worked his way part Fujiwara and Curtain to move up to second place but a lap later Curtain was up to second place and doing his best to try and chase down Charpentier.  Brookes had worked his way further forward to tenth place while Dean Thomas was running a creditable 14th place in his role as a stand in rider for the injured Stephane Chambon.

Curtain was going to have his work cut out for him to try and challenge Charpentier as the defending world champion was circulating nearly half a second quicker per lap.  Josh Brookes had worked his way up to ninth place on his Ducati. Gobert up to 20th.

Curtain responded to Charpentier's pace on lap five with the fastest lap of the race to visually close the gap to Charpentier. Could Ten Kate's virtually unchallenged reign at the top be coming under attack!  Katsuaki Fujiwara was violently highsided out of the fight up front and will have taken some heavy bruising from that big tumble.

Curtain was right on the back of Charpentier buy lap six but was in a Ten Kate sandwich as Sofuoglu had also picked up his pace and was close astern in third place and in the hunt but Curtain again the fastest man on the track on lap six. The leading trio had streaked away from the rest of the field and as they approached the halfway point of the race there were no other riders in sight behind the triumvirate from France, Australian and Turkey.  Brookes was no running 10th and Dean Thomas had worked his way forward to 11th. Gobert up to 15th.

Lap nine saw Sofuoglu put in a new fastest lap of the race as he tried to get in a position to challenge Curtain for second place. Charpentier lowered the mark further on the next lap around the Losail International Circuit in Qatar but Curtain remained right on his tail cowling and the leading duo had started to pull away from young Turk Sofuoglu. Curtain took his turn to lower the fastest lap record again the next time around as he really started to hound Charpentier at virtually every turn.

With six laps to run Charpentier managed to pull a couple of tenths out of Curtain and the next couple of laps was going to be very telling about just how competitive a package over a full race distance is the Team Yamaha Germany YZF-R6.

Charpentier then broke into the 1m33s for the first time of the race and had gapped Curtain by a full second with five laps to run. Thomas was up to 9th, Brookes 11th, Gobert 14th.

Curtain had no answer for Charpentier's speed and the Frenchman continued to pull away and had more than two seconds over the Yamaha man with a couple of laps to run.

Charpentier even had a chance to show off a little on the last lap as he stamped his authority on the class once again.  Curtain second, Sofuoglu rounded out the podium. Dean Thomas was fighting for sixth place on the final lap before suffering some sort of misfortune on the final run to the flag.  Josh Brookes scored a top ten on the underdeveloped Scuderia 749R Ducati and Anthony Gobert scored a great 12th place finish on his first ride on the R6.

On the podium the organisers raised the incorrect flag above the head of Kevin Curtain for his second place honours. A similar thing happened some years ago at Laguna Seca when the Americans played the incorrect national anthem after an Australian took victory.