Aruba Ducati’s Chaz Davies ‘missed an easy podium’ in yesterday’s second WorldSBK race at Portimao, after crashing at what he described as cruising pace at the Portugese track.

Davies swept past Eugene Laverty for second at the halfway point but didn’t have the pace to try and catch runaway leader Jonathan Rea. The Welshman believes he relaxed a little too much and just loaded the front too much on his way into turn two with three laps left.

“It’s disappointing to finish the race like that because we’ve missed an easy podium. Our pace was OK, we were holding station with Rea without pushing over the top, but towards the end I relaxed a little and closed the the throttle a bit earlier than usual going into turn two, which ended up loading the front too much, and I went down,” said Davies.

“I was surprised because it’s a strange place to crash, especially when you feel like you’re cruising. That said, we’ve definitely made improvements today, but we still want to make another step forward in terms of stability at the end of the race, something on which we’ll work on tomorrow. Looking at the positive, we’ve closed in to second position in the championship, due to Tom’s misfortune, and with him back we should have an interesting end to the season.”