Ryuichi Kiyonari takes a one-point lead over Gregorio Lavilla into the double race penultimate round at the Bennetts British Superbike Championship at
Donington Park on Sunday 25 September and that should ensure a fast, frantic and fierce 'shoot-out' for supremacy.
Neither rider can afford to lose as they power into the action at the Leicestershire Grand Prix circuit for races that could provide the decisive action in the chase for the country's premier crown.
The way was paved for this terrific ‘winner takes all’ confrontation which was set-up earlier in the month at
Oulton Park where the exciting 22-year-old Japanese rider charged his HM Plant Honda to a winning double, taking the second race of the day at the Cheshire circuit by inches, or officially 0.004 seconds, from Lavilla.
That fast, desperate dash to the finish line by Kiyonari gave him the lead in the title stakes over his Airwaves Ducati rival who could hardly believe he had been beaten, as he had held the advantage going into the final corner.
Those heroics put Kiyonari on course to become the first Japanese rider to win the British crown, already he has won a dozen times this season, but a couple of crashes have cost him dearly, allowing first his team-mate Michael Rutter and then Lavilla to head the points tables.
Rutter, having ridden strongly for much of the season, has lost the initiative with a run of ill-fortune that has seen him tip-off his bike in each of the last three rounds and now he is playing 'catch-up', trailing the leading duo by 36 points, and a mountain to climb if he is to secure the title that he has come so close to claiming in recent years.
Twice the runner-up in the series, Rutter knows that he too has to go all out for victories, but given the pace and confidence of both Kiyonari and the 30-year-old Spaniard Lavilla, that is a tough order.
