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Chaz Davies claimed a third WorldSBK double of the season but the Welshman's Magny-Cours victories could not have been more contrasting.

In Saturday's opening race Davies was the only rider able to make intermediate tyres work from the outset and his reward was a comfortable victory. While the majority of the field elected to start the race on wet weather tyres, the Ducati rider gambled that the track would dry and the intermediate tyres would find their operating window. The race played out in exactly this fashion and the reward was 25 points and a 15^th WorldSBK race victory.

Those victory stats were padded further with Sunday success that owed as much to patience as to speed. Having spent three quarters of the race behind the Kawasaki riders, Davies pounced when Jonathan Rea and Tom Sykes tripped over each other and once in front the Ducati rider opened a lead that would eventually open to two seconds at the flag.

In Race 2 Davies felt that while he had the same pace as the Kawasaki riders the differences in machinery meant that he could make a move. The two bikes are able to achieve very similar lap times but do so in different ways. As a result some areas of the track where the Ducati was stronger were nullified by the Kawasaki being in just the wrong place at the wrong time.

A perfect example of this is through long corners where the Ducati spends much more time on the edge of the tyre than the Kawasaki. In France, Turn 4 is a perfect example of this; the Kawasaki's are more upright, so they were able to get on the power slightly earlier. This made it almost impossible for Davies to be close enough to overtake.

While Davies was able to bask in the glory of 50 points, Jonathan Rea was revelling in a championship lead extended to 48 points. The Northern Irishman is now an odds on favourite to wrap up a successful title defence in Jerez, but last weekend was another example of how to win a championship.

Rea spent the entire weekend marking Sykes’ card and making sure he was consistently in the right place to contain his title rival. On Saturday this was done by using the same tyres to start the race and pitting on the same lap. Sykes would eventually finish on the podium with Rea in fourth but the dye was cast for the weekend and the title battle.

Rea would simply approach each race with the goal of maximising his title chances. On Sunday, this was done by waiting to attack Sykes and finish ahead of him. Rea commented on Saturday that his approach to the end of the season would be to make sure that he “won the war and didn't get too concerned with the battles of each race.”

In Magny-Cours he won the battle by extending his title lead over Sykes and winning the war now looks increasingly likely to happen on Spanish soil next weekend in Jerez.