With the Australian Superbike Championship competitors heading into the crucial Queensland round at Morgan Park on August 5-7, we take a look at last time out in Perth and what the riders are thinking. ASBK photos are courtesy of Simon Phillips of SDPPhotographics.
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Mike Jones
“It’s been a fantastic weekend for myself and the DesmoSport Ducati team. To get the Pirelli Superpole yesterday was really important and to get the first race win was a great result.
“I’m really pleased to reward the team’s efforts. It was good to control race one from the front under pressure, a really, really cool feeling.
“In the second race I made a much better start, tried to push early, but the other guys were obviously very fast as well. Anyway, to finish on the podium and take second overall was a great way to cap off the weekend!”
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Wayne Maxwell
“I’m absolutely stoked to leave round four with the win. Barbagallo was one of the tracks that I was unsure about, and didn’t know whether I could go with the likes of Mike (Jones) and Glenn (Allerton), so to get a race win and to turn everything around after a crash on Thursday feels awesome,”
“A massive shout out to the Racesafe crew who got me out there and allowed me to get the job done, I wouldn’t have been able to do it without them.
“We have an awesome tight crew with the Yamaha team, and to come away with a win feels awesome. “
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Jamie Staffer
“I felt a lot better on Sunday than what I did on Saturday – I sort of struggled all weekend and I didn’t qualify in the best position,” Stauffer explained.
“Once racing kicked off though, it was the best thing that could have happened to me – I felt a lot better and I think it’s just about getting my confidence up after coming off my injury.
“I’ve had plenty of injuries to deal with across my career but this one has been the most challenging. We know what we need to work on ahead of Morgan Park, so we’ll just focus on the next round and go from there.”
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Troy Herfoss
“It was a big weekend for us again – it was a bit of a hard weekend. I’ve been competitive over the last two or three years where I’ve been able to go to every track and say ‘We’re could win this weekend’, but I felt as though I had to adjust my goals a bit in WA,”
“I approached round four as ‘how close can I get to the leaders?’ Because every session we just seemed to be losing time which is hard to accept. The goal for me was to have a time within three or four tenths of a second a lap of the leaders, and we did that.
“I was fourth in the first race, and not far off the podium, and in race two I didn’t make a mistake – I rode my best but we just weren’t able to quite match the front guys.
“I got the best out of myself on the weekend, and I can honestly say I made very little mistakes, so I’m looking forward to moving on to Morgan Park – they tell us it’s a Honda track!”
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Callum Spriggs
“At the start of the weekend I wasn’t feeling 100 percent and struggled to go faster. I got stuck at a wall in terms of lap times and struggled to go faster, but we came good in the races. The second race was even better again.
“It was good to fight for the win, we came up a little bit short, but I am happy with how the weekend finished. Hopefully we can get a win at Morgan Park and be right there for the championship, because that would definitely help.”
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Daniel Falzon
“Testing yesterday was very eventful for us, unfortunately we had a significant incident early in the day which forced us to ride the spare bike for the remainder of the afternoon.”
“However, our times and feeling with the bike is great, the overall pace for the field is already very fast and I anticipate some tight racing in the Superbike field in two week’s time.”
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Brandon Demmery
“A win and two seconds is nothing to be too sad about. It’s awesome to go into this part of the season with such a big championship lead, as I haven’t had this privilege in such a long time. We will keep working and try and win a few more races and try and take this championship away early.”
