CARL Fogarty produced his best form of the season to take the chequered flag in race two at Albacete to move up to second place in the 1998 Superbike Championship.

The Blackburn bike ace bounced back from a disappointing opening race to storm away from the pack in race two after four riders, including Burnley's Neil Hodgson, crashed at the first corner.

That allowed the Ducati ace to ease away from Noriyuki Haga on the Yamaha and into a commanding lead.

Castrol Honda's Aaron Slight got the better of Troy Corser and Haga within three laps but had to settle for second place behind the twice World Champion.

Corser took third with Haga fourth, and first race winner Pier-Francesco Chili was fifth.

"It was a great win for me. It made up for the disappointments of the opening race," said Fogarty.

"I rode as well as I have done for a long time in the second race.

"It was certainly my best performance of the season so far.

"I managed to get in front early on and from there it was quite easy really."

Foggy had struggled in the wet conditions in the opening race and could only manage a ninth place finish after Italian Chili won his first race of the year.

Chili finished little more than a second ahead of team-mate Corser with Spaniard Gregorio Lavilla taking third to send the home crowd wild, after he and Honda's Colin Edwards had battled for the early lead.

Kawasaki ace Hodgson followed up his heroics in Monza by taking seventh place.

"It was a wet race and that was as fast as I thought I could go," said Fogarty.

"I just didn't have the confidence to go any quicker. "So far I seem to have one good race and then one bad one. I need to get more consistent if I want to win the championship."

Australian Corser's second and third places in the two 20-lap races handed him the championship lead, seven points ahead of Fogarty in second.

First race result: 1 Pier-Francesco Chili, Italy (Ducati) 34m 32.554s, 2

Troy Corser, Australia (Ducati) 34m 33.870s, 3 Gregorio Lavilla, Spain

(Ducati) 34m 36.363s, 4 Aaron Slight, New Zealand (Castrol Honda) 34m

43.204s, 5 Colin Edwards, USA (Castrol Honda) 34m 44.532s, 6 Scott Russell, USA (Yamaha) 34m 44.666s, 7 Neil Hodgson, GB (Kawasaki) 34m 45.448s, 8 Alessandro Gramigni, Italy (Ducati) 35m 08.756s, 9 Carl Fogarty, GB (Ducati) 35m 19.339s, 10 Noriyuki Haga, Japan (Yamaha) 35m 23.723s.

Second race result: 1 Carl Fogarty, GB (Ducati) 31m 09.535s, 2 Aaron

Slight, New Zealand (Castrol Honda) 31m 15.567s, 3 Troy Corser, Australia (Ducati) 31m 18.342s, 4 Noriyuki Haga, Japan (Yamaha) 31m 24.892s, 5 Pier-Francesco Chili, Italy (Ducati) 31m 25.697s, 6 Piergiorgio Bontempi, Italy (Kawasaki) 31m 30.191s, 7 Akira Yanagawa, Japan (Kawasaki) 31m 30.279s, 8 Peter Goddard, Australia (Suzuki) 31m 39.212s, 9 Scott Russell, USA (Yamaha) 31m 40.526s, 10 Jamie Whitham, GB (Suzuki) 31m 09.592s.

Championship points after three of 13 rounds: 1 Corser 135, 2 Fogarty 128, Haga 123, 4 Slight 106, 5 Chili 103, 6 Edwards 98, 7 Yanagawa 55, 8 Goddard 53, 9 Whitham 50, 10 Hodgson 45

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