FreestyleXtreme Magazine Issue 1 | Page 65

EUGENE LAVERTY midnight phone call due to people being in different time zones on the other side of the world. I do thoroughly enjoy it all though and am happy that I have taken this direction in my career. You must be so pleased with the start to your 2014 season Eugene. What are your initial thoughts on the new Suzuki? Testing went well but I really didn’t expect to be in a position to win the first race. That came as a surprise even to me. There had been 94 World Superbike races since the last win for Suzuki so I thought we would have to wait a little bit longer. A victory first time out was a dream come true. I’m now the only rider ever to have won back-to-back World Superbike races with different manufacturers which demonstrates the scale of our achievement. Who do you see as the strongest competitors you’ll be doing battle with this season? Tom Sykes is the World Champion. He is staying on the same bike in the same team so obviously he will be favourite. I also expect the Aprilia duo of u FreestyleXtreme | 65