M.A step up Supersport 300 technical inspections
There has been much frustration amongst Supersport 300 competitors and teams in recent years with a lack of technical oversight in the class. It has led to some people dubbing the class ‘Superbike 300’.
I know of teams that have even pulled out of the category in recent years, frustrated at the lack of technical compliance checks that left them with a view that to compete, you had to cheat.
I have made mention of these issues in MCNews.com.au before and have raised the issue with senior personnel at Motorcycling Australia.
It seems that things now might have turned the corner in 2022 as a number of Supersport 300 machines were subjected to technical checks at the Phillip Island season opener.
Two of the machines checked were found to be non-compliant.
Motorcycling Australia have also shown they are not messing about when it comes to penalties, with results not stripped from one race, or the one category they were competing, but they have been excluded from the results of all six races they competed in across the Supersport 300 and R3 Cup categories at the 2022 season opener.
From the results it is easy to identify who was stripped of their results, but we have removed their names from this piece so what may be an innocent mistake doesn’t haunt them for years on Google.
This puts riders on notice that the cheating needs to stop and penalties if found will be severe.
The kids more than likely didn’t modify their bikes themselves, and probably didn’t even have any knowledge of the fact that their machine contravened the rules. I am not here to try and drop a bucket on a couple of young kids that were likely innocent parties with no knowledge of what had been done to their machines. It is also certain that they were not the only riders in the class on non-compliant machinery over the course of the weekend, it is just that these are the only two that got caught…
I have heard of numerous instances where riders have innocently brought secondhand Supersport 300 bikes only to find when undertaking their own race preparations, porting on their cylinder head and oversize throttle bodies.
Oversize throttle bodies are in fact so common that you don’t even have to find someone in this country to mill them out for you, they are available from overseas sites on an exchange basis, or to purchase outright. These come off the shelf already bored out with sellers making claims of between 7 and 15 per cent improvements in power depending on what other modifications are made, and they bolt straight up to a stock R3 air-box.
Want gaskets that raise your compression, ceramic bearings for your R3 gearbox, a 340 cc big-bore kit? All easily ordered over the internet.
Everyone around the sport I have spoken to is saying that while this is long overdue, they applaud this move and the severity of the penalties handed down, as this will be the only way to start to bring change in the category.
