Max Biaggi chose the best way possible to leave behind his Donington weekend on Sunday, with two more podiums in second place, to add to the same results he achieved in the opening round of the season. Despite a couple of misadventures, including a nasty-looking crash in FP2 just before Superpole, the reigning champion finished behind Jonathan Rea in race 1 and Carlos Checa after the break. The 40 points took him back into second place, and Biaggi is now 43 points behind leader Checa.

After a problematic weekend Biaggi actually only dropped one point to Checa, and despite not getting the win in race 2, which looked likely when he passed Checa for the lead a couple of laps before the end, the Italian is now looking forward to Monza, where he had two totally unrivalled wins last year.

"We reaped the maximum," commented Biaggi, "especially considering what we went through on Saturday. Unfortunately we had to make a forced choice of tyres with our RSV4. I would not have been able to use the softer tyres that Checa chose. When I overtook him in Race 2 I pushed to the limit, but I just didn't have the grip to hold onto first place. The advantage of the two cylinders in being able to use softer tyres is important on a track like this one, besides the fact that I had a technical problem for the last 5 or 6 laps in Race 2."

"In any case I have to thank my Team. After the crash and at the end of Race 1 the work they did allowed me to use the first bike which I liked a lot better. I'm happy with second place. We still need to make up a lot of points, but we won't let up. Monza could be an important race from this point of view".