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There have been some ups and downs in his career but for Chaz Davies the highest high has not been difficult to spot. For the Welsh racing Wizard it finally came into sharp focus last weekend, at Magny-Cours in France, when he became the Supersport World Champion on his Yamaha ParkinGO R6.

Chaz, who was in reflective mood after the impact of his championship win had been absorbed, it seems, said "This feels like not a long time coming, but a lot of hard work. I've had a lot of bad days and good days in this sport. It only takes one person and one team, and a little bit of faith to turn it around and that person is Giuliano Rovelli (boss of his ParkinGO team) presenting an opportunity to me two years ago in Imola to come and ride for him, to try me out basically. I just felt like it was another segment in my career. So yeah, I got that opportunity, did my best with it and I was able to pay back with some good results last year and this year with the late change to Yamaha, everything was a little bit unknown coming into the season. The first couple of races were a little bit difficult, we went the wrong direction with the setup, and then we had a really good package in the middle of the year. As soon as things started to click into gear we kept pushing and pushing to try to reduce the gap in the points because I think Luca (Scassa) was ahead at that point. We've been very, very, consistent in the middle part of the season, pushed hard the whole time and everything worked out very well for us until last week."

He continued, "We did a lot of hard riding in the middle of the season to get a big advantage, as big advantage as possible in the points. But even in Silverstone I was ready to start being careful if I had to finish third. If I had to take a result off the podium or crash, I'd take the result off the podium. But eventually it turned out that I won in Silverstone, I won in Nürburgring. In Germany I felt like I had one hand on the championship but I know, probably better than the most, it can change like that (finger snap). So at Imola things went perfect until five laps to go. It was a big, big disappointment last week but luckily we did have the points gap and I was able to do just enough today, really. I can't say it was a fantastic day in Magny-Cours for me but the objective was to do just enough after last week and that's what we did."

When asked about how it felt to win when there were a lot of other potential champions about, on Honda and Kawasaki machines, Chaz stated, "It's been a tough going. Everybody had their own moments, and the key was trying to stay consistent and obviously push hard every race but the main thing was consistency because guys that popped up one weekend weren't there the weekend before. So they turned around quite a lot and make it fairly exciting. So the key was consistency and obviously every weekend I was delivered with a good bike. The team didn't have to do anything drastic, just stay focused and not get too crazy to get outside the range of the setup and just try to do what we do. Obviously I tried not to make mistakes during the races."