Rampant Reynolds secures rare double

John Reynolds won two hard-fought races in the Irish round of the British Superbike Championship to move into second place in the standings at Mondello Park, near Dublin.

The former champion took his first double win for almost two years but it made little impression on Shane Byrne's lead in the Championship, with the MonsterMob-Ducati rider 135 points clear of his Rizla-Suzuki rival.

After two charging rides from second-row starts, Reynolds said: "This is really sweet - they were hard races, but good fun."

Kawasaki's Glen Richards and then the Virgin Mobile-Yamaha rider Gary Mason had led the opening race with Reynolds on the charge and moving into second place at half-distance.

Reynolds completed the charge to win by just over a second from Sean Emmett, with Yukio Kagayama back in third.

"I had worked out where I could take the lead, and had been sizing Gary up for three or four laps, and when the opportunity came, I was ready to take it. Winning is fantastic," Reynolds said.

Kagayama, riding for Rizla-Suzuki, made the running in race two but his team-mate Reynolds was soon on his tail, running second after seven laps and then piling on the pressure before taking the lead on the penultimate lap.

It seemed set for a Suzuki one-two but Kagayama crashed out on the final lap with the series leader, Shane Byrne, a distant ninth in the opener, inheriting second place ahead of Richards.

"I needed that," Byrne said. "In the first race my brake lever was damaged in a first-corner tangle and that slowed me. We made changes for the second and they helped."