Yukio Kagayama took a winning double in the fourth round of the THINK!

British Superbike Championship at Oulton Park, with his series leading

Rizla Suzuki team-mate John Reynolds having to settle for second best.

The Japanese rider, who returns home this week for further surgery as he

continues his lengthy recovery from the injuries sustained in a crash last

August, took both races with late, determined overtaking moves.

Reynolds had set the pace in each race. In the opener, Kagayama had closed

in dramatically, running a bike's length down as they went into the final

lap, and then made the decisive action at the Shell Oils corner, edging

alongside the former twice champion, and the powering out with the

advantage.

"Very much happy," smiled Kagayama as he enjoyed his victory by just 0.122

seconds, and he had even more to cheer about next time out. Again

Reynolds dictated terms out front, but his team-mate was hot on the charge,

and this time, he grabbed the lead at Lodge Corner with three laps to go,

hanging on to his third win in four races by 0.16 seconds.

Behind them was the determined Michael Rutter, maintaining his title hopes

despite twice having to stage remarkable fight-backs. In the opener, his HM

Plant Honda Fireblade was pushed wide on the first corner, dropping him to

twelfth. Then, an electrical fault just before the second race meant he had

to start from the back of the grid.

In each race he hit back to take third place, and is now 18 points down on

Reynolds, but Kagayama, is closing in on them, third in the rankings, and

21 points adrift of Rutter.

The drama at the Cheshire circuit had begun even before the first race - on

the warm-up lap, Vince Whittle clipped the rear of another bike, losing

control of his Ducati which split its fuel tank as it slammed down on the

tarmac, exploding into a fireball as it punted Adam Hitchcock off his

machine, and the slid some 150 yards into the Lodge Corner gravel trap.

Remarkably, no-one was injured despite the intensity of the blaze that

destroyed Whittle's machine.

Ends