Motorsport: Bugden does the maths to take title

Australian Robbie Bugden stayed cool in the scorching conditions to retain his Kiwi superbike crown at the fifth and final round of this season's New Zealand Superbike Championships at Taupo.

Defending champion Bugden, from Brisbane, took his Triple R Suzuki GSX-R1000 to Taupo at the weekend with a solid lead in the championship standings.

This was despite suffering a shocker - where he finished an unaccustomed 10th in race one and the crashed out of race two - at the previous round at a rain-drenched Hampton Downs a week earlier.

But, with a 21-point advantage over Feilding's Craig Shirriffs and with a 28-point gap back to third-ranked rider Dennis Charlett it meant the title was his to lose and an outright win for Shirriffs really only a remote possibility.

But nothing is guaranteed in this unforgiving sport and Shirriffs gave himself a sniff of a chance of taking the title for a first time when he won the day's first of two superbike races, finishing just ahead of Bugden and Hamilton's Nick Cole.

The revised points standings showed Bugden with a 16-point lead over Shirriffs with just one race to go, meaning even if Shirriffs won the final outing, sixth place or better would be enough for Bugden to wrap it up.

Bugden remained calm and raced his way to fifth in race two.

Meanwhile, Shirriffs crashed out when he was running in second spot in the final race. While Shirriffs did recover his bike and carry on, he managed only sixth, the race won by Wellington's Sloan Frost, with Cole the runner-up.

Bugden was New Zealand superbike class champion three times consecutively between 2007 and 2009, and then won it a fourth time last season.

"I was pushing hard at the start of that second race, hoping to create a break on the field, but everyone simply came with me," said the 32-year-old Bugden.

"When I saw that Craig (Shirriffs) had crashed, I backed it off a bit. I'd done the maths and knew what I had to do to win the title."