Jonathan Rea has celebrated a home-away-from home double after sweeping the opening world superbike championship round at Victoria's Phillip Island.
The Northern Irishman began his world title defence in style, triumphing narrowly on his Kawasaki in final lap duels with Ducati arch-rival Chaz Davies in both the race one on Saturday and race two on Sunday.
Rea, who is married to Phillip Island's Tatia Weston and spends summer at the island, wasted no time in enjoying the triumph with his local supporters.
"To win two last-lap battles here is pretty tough so I am so happy," said Rea.
"We worked so hard in the off-season to work on tyre conservation, and my rear tyre still looks good on the left side after race two so that bodes well for the rest of the season.
"I just wanted to come here and start my year in a good way, and to leave with 50 points is very nice."
Sunday's 22 lap race was intense throughout and boiled down to an extremely tight tussle between Rea and Davies, with Rea winning by just 0.025 seconds.
His combined winning margin over Davies in the two races was just 0.067 seconds.
Davies' teammate Marco Melandri made amends for a crash in race one with an excellent third position, 0.249 seconds behind Rea, while Alex Lowes made it two fourth places on his Yamaha.
Spaniard Xavi Fores (Ducati) was also in the thick of the front-running action before finishing fifth, ahead of world No. 2 Tom Sykes (Kawasaki), Michael van der Mark (Yamaha), Leon Camier (MV Agusta), Lorenzo Savadori (Aprilia) and Eugene Laverty (Aprilia).
Australia's wildcard Josh Brookes brought his Yamaha home in 12th position after he retired with overheating issues in race one.
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