Rea Superbike Winner in Phillip Island

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Reigning champion Jonathan Rea clinched a double win in round one of the World Superbike series in Australia after Chaz Davies slid off on the last lap.

As was the case in Saturday's opener, the Northern Irishman and Welsh rider duelled on the final lap but on Sunday Davies came off after running wide.

That left Rea, 29, to finish 0.83 seconds ahead of Dutchman Michael van der Mark with Davide Giugliano third.

Davies, 29, remounted his bike to cross the line in 10th spot.

Rea pipped Ducati rider Davies by 0.063 seconds in Saturday's season-opener in Phillip Island with Van der Mark taking third.

The Northern Irishman is aiming to emulate the achievement of Carl Fogarty, who successfully defended his title twice in the 1990s.

Rea won 14 of the 26 races last year and was on the podium 23 times.

The defending champion's Kawasaki team-mate Tom Sykes led for almost half the race before a mistake dropped him back to fourth.

Dutchman Van der Mark then led for seven laps before Davies edged into the lead prior to his final-lap mishap.

Nicky Hayden, the 2006 MotoGP champion, took fourth with Sylvain Guintoli and Britain's Tom Sykes completing the top six.

Rea was delighted to complete his weekend double which emphasised that he is likely to be the rider to beat again this season.

"It's incredible to start my year here with the double," the Northern Irishman said.

Rea's opening double victory gives him a 14-point lead over Van der Mark heading into the second round in Thailand in two weeks.

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Honda Name Hasegawa Head of F1

Yasuhisa Arai, the head of Honda’s Formula One programme, will step down at the end of the month and be replaced by Yusuke Hasegawa, McLaren’s engine partners said on Tuesday.

Hasegawa has previous experience in Formula One from Honda’s time with the BAR and Jordan teams.

Arai, 59, had led Honda’s efforts in the sport since they returned in a new partnership with McLaren in a troubled 2015 season marked by a lack of performance from the unreliable power unit.

Honda said that Arai, who will retire next year, had been moved as part of a wider restructuring.

McLaren finished ninth of 10 teams in 2015 and will be hoping for a considerable improvement in the new season, which starts on 20 March in Melbourne, Australia.

McLaren driver Fernando Alonso is “excited” to get the 2016 campaign underway as he believes McLaren-Honda learnt a great deal from last year’s “tricky” season. McLaren’s first year back with Honda power did not go according to plan.

The team managed just 29 points, suffered 12 retirements and were hit with a record 105-place penalty at the Belgium Grand Prix.

Throughout the season both McLaren and Honda insisted that it was a year for laying foundations for the future. Foundations that Alonso hopes will reap some rewards in 2016.

“The start of a new season is always a special feeling, characterised by a lot of anticipation for the year ahead,” said the double World Champion. “This year is no different: I’m excited and raring to go.

“Last year the spotlight was very much on McLaren-Honda as we embarked on the first year of our renewed partnership. It was a tricky season for all of us, but we learned a hell of a lot.

“Likewise, it’s been a very productive winter for me. I’ve been training extremely hard, as usual, but also enjoying time with my family, and keeping tabs on all the hard work going on at the McLaren Technology Centre, Woking, where the McLaren guys have been doing an incredible job to get everything ready in time. The Honda boys have been working flat-out in Sakura, too.”

As for the new MP4-31, which was unveiled online the day before pre-season testing, Alonso reckons it is “nicely packaged” car.

“The aero package shows fantastic attention to detail. The whole car is beautiful in fact – it’s particularly nicely packaged from an aerodynamic point of view as I say – and I’m 100 per cent ready for the challenge ahead.”

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Rocket Reaches Masters Semifinal

Ronnie O'Sullivan reached the semi-finals of the Masters with an impressive 6-3 victory over three-time winner and world number one Mark Selby.

The five-time Masters champion knocked in one century and six-half centuries, including a match-winning 73 in frame nine, after Selby had a break of 70.

"You're not going to win this tournament by playing negative," O'Sullivan, 40, told BBC Sport.

He will face either John Higgins or Stuart Bingham in the last four.

BBC snooker analyst Steve Davis called O'Sullivan's clearance to win the match "one of the greatest of all time".

However, five-time world champion O'Sullivan, who is playing his first major tournament since taking a break from the sport last April, insisted he is not on top of his game.

He said: "It was a chance but I'm trying to kid myself I'm confident.

"I felt a bit more relaxed and comfortable. My attitude was fantastic. But I'm struggling with my technique and it's just the occasion and the competitive instinct within me that's making me try and find something.

"I'm not cruising where you flick through the gears."

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Hamilton Recalls Kart Crash

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Lewis Hamilton has said that Jules Bianchi's crash at Suzuka during the Japanese Grand Prix last Sunday has brought back painful and "traumatic" memories of witnessing a fellow kart driver die in an accident when he was nine years old.

The world championship leader wrote on his BBC Sport blog that he has been "praying like crazy" for the Marussia driver who remains in a critical but stable condition at the Mie General Medical Centre in Yokkaichi after suffering a diffuse axonal injury in the collision with a tractor during the race.

"When I was nine, I saw a young driver die when I was racing karts," Hamilton wrote. "Even now I can remember standing on the bank beside a track with him with our suits on just before a race, all laughing and joking. And then the next thing I knew I was at his funeral."

Hamilton added that while the ramifications of Bianchi's accident were hard to banish from his thoughts, it had not made him question his desire to continue racing in Formula One.

He remained comfortable in a sport in which he excelled, despite the dangers, he said and the thrill was impossible to replicate doing anything else.

He was sure, he said, that Bianchi as "a real racer" would want the Russian Grand Prix to go ahead just as he would should anything unfortunate happen to him during a race. "He is here with us in spirit," he said.

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Mola Wins London World Triathlon

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Mario Mola claimed victory from South Africa's Richard Murray as Britain's Olympic champion Alistair Brownlee came fourth in a hard-fought World Triathlon Series race in London.

Brownlee, after a disappointing fourth place in Japan, led the field into the final kilometre but was outpaced.

"I went hard but with 100m to go I had nothing left," he told BBC Sport.

American Gwen Jorgensen won the women's race to replace Briton Jodie Stimpson, who finished 11th, as series leader.

Fellow American Sarah Groff was second, with Australian Emma Jackson third.

Jorgensen now leads the rankings from Stimpson after four rounds, with another Briton, Helen Jenkins, in fourth.

The men's podium places were completed by Portugal's Joao Pereira, with younger Brownlee brother Jonny fifth, ahead of series leader Javier Gomez.

Alistair Brownlee has said he is prioritising success at this summer's Commonwealth Games, but the 2009 and 2011 world champion was clearly determined to replicate the display that earned him Olympic gold in the same Hyde Park setting in 2012.

After Slovakian Richard Varga led a 1.5km swim, Brownlee repeatedly came to the front of a group of riders seeking to open up a gap over a 40km course on the bike.

Despite catching the leaders from the swim, all the rivals were together coming into the 5km run. It was Alistair who again set the pace but he was soon marked by brother Jonathan, Murray and Spaniards Gomez and Mola.

As the final kilometre approached, Gomez and Jonny Brownlee were dropped by Alistair's aggression, but it was Mola who had the better tactics on the day as he ran home for a first world series victory ahead of Murray in the final sprint.

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F1 Become Artificial - Villeneuve

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Formula 1 has become "artificial" and is in danger of losing the respect of its fans, according to former world champion Jacques Villeneuve.

The 1997 champion criticised the DRS system and the recent decision to award double points in the final race.

"I don't get modern Formula 1," the 42-year-old Canadian told BBC Sport.

He accused those running the sport of creating "a fake show" and also claimed drivers "lack personality" and should speak out against the changes.

Villeneuve, one of only three drivers to have won the Formula 1 world title, the Indycar Championship and the Indy 500, believes the changes made to F1 since he left the sport in 2006 have not improved it.

A major change for the 2014 season is the decision to award double points at the final race in an attempt to ensure the fights for the world championship lasts as long as possible.

There has even been talk of extending double points to the last three races of the season.

As for DRS - the drag reduction system introduced in 2011 to increase overtaking and make F1 more exciting for spectators - former Williams, BAR and Renault driver Villeneuve was just as critical.

"Once you start going down that route you cannot stop, you have to make more and more of it," he said.

He added: "What's the next thing that will come? It becomes more and more artificial and, instead of having a positive effect, you end up making it where people don't respect it any more."

Villeneuve, who has announced he will drive for Scottish team Albatec Racing in World Rallycross next season, also believes too many of the current drivers are "highly uninteresting".

"It's a habit now to not have a personality in Formula 1," he told BBC Radio 5 live Sport.

"You can imagine a driver that gets a lot of sponsor money being told 'don't say that please' and he will toe the line. So they are not fast, paid to race and highly uninteresting on top of it. It is tough for F1 right now."

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Vonn Injured in Training

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Lindsey Vonn was injured in a training crash at Copper Mountain ahead of her return to racing following major knee surgery.

Vonn, 29, was taken off the slope on a sled and driven to nearby Vail, Colorado, for medical examinations.

"She is being evaluated to determine if there are any injuries, as is standard procedure," US Ski Team spokesman Tom Kelly told BBC Sport.

"We'll have a report once we know more."

The American was not admitted to hospital but went home to Vail to be evaluated by the doctor who performed her recent knee surgery.

Vonn started training in September after being out for seven months with ruptured ligaments following a crash at the World Alpine Skiing Championships in Schladming, Austria.

Re-injuring her right knee might be the end of her bid to defend her Olympic crown in February at Sochi.

Vonn's friend and team-mate Julia Mancuso tweeted: "Let's all send Lindsey Vonn our positivity and hope for the best."

The four-time overall World Cup champion had hoped to compete next week at Beaver Creek in a World Cup event.

Vonn is dating 14-time major golf champion Tiger Woods.

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Rocket Once Offered Fix

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Ronnie O'Sullivan says he rejected a £20,000 offer to fix a snooker match. The five-time world champion said a proposal concerning a Premier League fixture was made by somebody he knew about 10 years ago.

"Someone rang me and said he'd like to meet me over in the forest and have a walk through the woods," O'Sullivan, 37, wrote in his new autobiography.

"What they were offering, 20 grand," he added, "I could get for a couple of nights' work."

O'Sullivan, who won his fifth world title in May after taking a six-month break from the sport, said the meeting - in Epping Forest, Essex - lasted about 15 minutes.

"If anyone could get away with it, I could. I could just play one-handed, or left-handed or just put a towel over my head and pretend I was going nuts. But it's not something I would or could do. I couldn't live with myself; I'd feel that was robbing somebody."

The revelation comes less than a month after former world top-five player Stephen Lee was handed a 12-year ban after being found guilty of seven match-fixing charges.

A response to O'Sullivan's comments is being considered by the World Professional Billiards and Snooker Association.

In an interview with BBC Sport, the player was asked whether he had ever considered throwing a match.

"I can't do it. I enjoy playing - snooker's given me a great life.," he said.

"It's not just about the money. You put all of that on the line. Without snooker you'd lose friends and family.

"You're not just taking the money, but jeopardising relationships with people, the sport, and the opportunity to embrace great things that being a professional snooker player can give you."

O'Sullivan recently backtracked on a claim he made that Lee was not the only player guilty of match-fixing.

The Essex player, nicknamed 'The Rocket', had originally tweeted: "I've heard there's many more players who throw snooker matches.

"I suppose Steve Lee was just caught out.

"No need to worry if you got nothing to hide. But plenty of people have got loads to hide. That's why there is no free speech. They're hiding."

World Snooker boss Barry Hearn reacted by stating O'Sullivan's comments were "unacceptable and damaging".

O'Sullivan later said he had "no concrete evidence of match-fixing in snooker," but hinted players were aware of who might be involved.

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