Walker celebrates last-to-first debut victory.

After 131 starts, Chris Walker finally took his first ever World Superbike win with an astonishing last-to-first charge during a soaking wet race one at Assen on Sunday.

The PSG-1 Kawasaki rider was forced to start the 22-lap contest dead last - then was knocked wide and into the gravel at turn one (top picture) - before starting his daring fightback. While the likes of Troy Bayliss, Noriyuki Haga, Troy Corser and Yukio Kagayama were caught out by the slick conditions ahead of him, Walker looked like he was on rails as he confidently kept his ZX-10R on two wheels to eventually beat Yamaha's Andrew Pitt by five seconds, with Honda's Michel Fabrizio third.

Walker's debut world championship victory marked Kawasaki's first WSBK win since a double success for Hitoyasu Izutsu at Sugo in 2000 and marked the Englishman's first podium appearance of the year. Walker's most recent Superbike victory prior to Assen was in the British Superbike Championship during the 2000 season.

"It's pretty special, you hear people say a million times 'it's not sunk in yet' after something like this, but it really hasn't," Chris told Crash.net Radio at Assen. "Unfortunately I can't celebrate with Rachel - she's got an audition in London on Tuesday and had to leave - but Jonesy (Craig Jones) and Stuey Easton are staying, so we'll definitely have a beer tonight. It's fantastic. It's been a long, long time since I've won a Superbike race and it felt very special. I've been told that going from last to first has never been done in World Superbikes before so that's pretty special as well.

"We had a problem with the bike during the morning warm-up - when I stopped to do a practice start the engine kinda fluffed up a bit and we weren't sure what was wrong. I told the guys when I got back, they stripped the engine down and basically we couldn't get it back together in time to join the grid. The team said 'don't worry, it's a long race and it's better to make sure the bike is right' - when I got punted off into the gravel at the first corner I thought 'it's definitely going to be a long race'! But that incident actually kept me out of trouble in the early laps, I got to do a lot of laps on my own which helped me get into a good rhythm and get a good pace going."

That pace carried Chris swiftly to towards the front, helped by incidents and accidents ahead, but 'The Stalker' then faced a tough fight for victory with Pitt and Fabrizio - both of whom he finally broke with a few laps to go - but at what point did Walker think he'd won it?

"As I exited the last chicane for the last time!" he grinned. "The conditions mid-race were really treacherous. The lap times got slower mid-race, because the conditions were worse, but people were still trying to push. I think that's what won it for me really. At almost every corner there were yellow flags and by the halfway point it was so wet and muddy that you couldn't see who the fallen riders were. I stopped looking at them after that and purposely didn't look at my pit board for the first half of the race. I didn't want to see that I was still in 20th place or something! The first time I looked I was about sixth.

"I was really comfortably when I got up to second behind Andrew - he and Fabrizio did a mega job, they stayed on board and set a good pace up front - but when I saw that Fabrizio wasn't going away I thought I'll have to get past Andrew or I could end up off the rostrum. It was pretty tough from then on in. Andrew put a good pace in, he was riding really smooth and it was a lot harder when I was leading.

"Thanks to everyone that turned up here today - it was mega!" concluded the popular 34-year-old, who was cheered to victory by thousands of travelling British fans.

Meanwhile, the race one rain had all but cleared by the second and final outing, which Walker went on to finish 14th after the wrong tyre was fitted on the grid.

"To be honest we messed up: We changed tyres on the grid and the wrong tyre went on by mistake - it was too soft and only lasted a few laps, but not even that can put a dampener on the first race," said Chris.

Walker's team-mate Fonsi Nieto completed an unforgettable day for the PSG-1 team with a debut podium by finishing third in race two, which was won by Ducati's championship leader Troy Bayliss.