CARL Fogarty smashed his own World Superbikes points record in the final round in Japan.

But he was unable to break the local stranglehold on the two races in Sugo.

The new world champion was second in the first race and fifth in the final race of the year to end the season with a massive 489 points.

That beat the 478 he amassed during his second championship-winning season of 1995.

And he did all he could to help Ducati team-mate Troy Corser secure second place in the championship standings by beating Honda's Colin Edwards in both races.

But the Ducatis struggled to find suitable tyres throughout the meeting and Edwards stole second place from the Australian through having more race wins throughout the year.

Fogarty's domination of the 1999 campaign has been phenomenal. He finished a massive 127 points above Edwards, who won only four races compared to the champion's 11.

That means Fogarty could have lost five of his race wins and still ended up as top dog.

And, for a long time during race one in Japan, it looked as though he was about to beat his previous record of 11 race wins. He started on the second row of the grid having lost time on the final bend of his Superpole lap, but stormed into second place behind Akira Yanagawa by the first bend and was leading before the end of the first lap.

For 10 laps Foggy looked untouchable before local wild card entry Akira Ryo started closing in.

He eventually passed on the 15th lap and was able to comfortably maintain his lead.

Foggy said: "I had great grip for 10 laps then it was really bad. There have only been about two tracks this year where Dunlop tyres have had an advantage over Michelin and this was one.

"I could not believe I finished second when it felt like I was riding so slowly. The record number of points does not mean too much, I wanted to win the race.

"I decided to have a go if I made a good start but when Ryo came by I just let him go as he was on a mission to impress his team and home crowd.

"But I wasn't prepared to push my luck at this stage of the season.

"I would have liked to have used a harder tyre but that was the hardest we had."

In race two, Fogarty was inches away from repeating his start but had to settle for maintaining fifth place through the first bend.

With the track temperature higher for the afternoon race, the tyre problems were magnified and Fogarty failed to make an impression in the early stages.

At one point he dropped to seventh as Ito and Pierfrancesco Chili went through. But Ito crashed out and Fogarty retook the Italian, although it was too late in the race to make any impression on the leading bunch.

He added: "I could push harder as soon as I had a bit of room in the group in the second half of the race, but it was too late to try and get to the front of the race."

Yanagawa took his first race win of the series, from Ryo in second.

First race result: 1 Akira Ryo, Japan (Suzuki) 37m 59.744s, 2 Carl Fogarty, GB (Ducati) 38m 02.572s, 3 Akira Yanagawa, Japan (Kawasaki) 38m 02.676s, 4 Keiichi Kitigawa, Japan (Suzuki) 38m 07.432s, 5 Wataru Yoshikawa, Japan (Yamaha) 38m 08.426s, 6 Tamaki Serizawa, Japan (Kawasaki) 38m 11.281s, 7 Pier-Francesco Chili, Italy (Suzuki) 38m 12.781s, 8 Troy Corser, Australia (Ducati) 38m 13.051s, 9 Colin Edwards, USA (Castrol Honda) 38m 14.927s, 10 Makoto Tamada, Japan (Honda) 38m 14.967s.

Second race result: 1 Akira Yanagawa, Japan (Kawasaki) 38m 03.761s, 2 Akira Ryo, Japan (Suzuki) 38m 03.900s, 3 Keiichi Kitigawa, Japan (Suzuki) 38m 04.335s, 4 Noriyuki Haga, Japan (Yamaha) 38m 08.848s, 5 Carl Fogarty, GB (Ducati) 38m 09.402s, 6 Wataru Yoshikawa, Japan (Yamaha) 38m 10.844s, 7 Pier-Francesco Chili, Italy (Suzuki) 38m 13.019s, 8 Tamaki Serizawa, Japan (Kawasaki) 38m 15.653s, 9 Colin Edwards, USA (Castrol Honda) 38m 16.172s, 10 Makoto Tamada, Japan (Honda) 38m 16.202s.

Final championship points: 1 Fogarty 489, 2 Edwards 361 (five wins), 3 Corser 361 (three wins), 4 Slight 323, 5 Yanagawa 308, 6 Chili 251, 7 Haga 196, 8 Lavilla 156, 9 Fujiwara 119, 10 Guareschi 99

Manufacturers: 1 Ducati 569, 2 Honda 452, 3 Kawasaki 345, 4 Suzuki 319, 5 Yamaha 261, 6 Aprilia 84.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.