Tom Edwards wins second scorching 300 Supersport race at Phillip Island
After an amazing Australian Supersport 300 race one this morning at Phillip Island the 42-strong field of combatants lined up for their second stanza at 1655 this afternoon for another eight laps of small capacity madness. Reid Battye was the victor this morning by the narrowest of margins from Tom Edwards while young Billy Van Eerde rounded out the podium. Who would come out on top this time around…?
Tom Edwards was the early leader in this bout from race one victor Reid Battye as Jack Mahaffy, Zac Levy, Jack Passfield and Billy Van Eerde gave chase. The new lap record holder from race one Laura Brown scored a jump-start penalty and was tenth on the track at the end of lap one.
Reid Battye got the better of Tom Edwards, and Jack Mahaffy then followed suit to demote Edwards to third place. Mahaffy then lost a number of positions and then stopped at turn eight, promoting Edwards back up to second place and Zac Levy up to third place, Levy then had the slipstream of both those riders to momentarily sniff the race lead.
A titanic tussle was underway for fourth position with Van Eerde, Passfield, Demmery, Nicholson, Ford, Sell, Brown and young Oli Bayliss all in that heady mix of youth and testosterone. That battle unfolding more than five-seconds behind the leading triumvirate.
Zac Levy moved past Reid Battye for second place with just over two laps to go, but as they crossed the stripe less than a tenth of a second separated that leading trio. Battye came out the other side in the race lead.
The battle for fourth had seen Drew Sells take the advantage with two laps to run but only a few corners later it was Scott Nicholson in fourth ahead of Billy Van Eerde and Oli Bayliss, Passfield, Sells and Brown also in that mix.
At the last lap board it was Battye, Levy and Edwards still with nothing separating them. While Drew Sells have moved back in to fourth place ahead of Laura Brown while Billy Van Eerde had gone out of the running.
Tom Edwards took the race victory from Battye and Levy, with six-hundredths of a second covering those podium getters.
Laura Brown crossed the stripe in fourth place to win that battle but once the ten-second jump-start penalty was applied that would shuffle her down outside the top ten, and promote Scott Nicholson in that fourth position.
Tom Edwards
“I saw that Reid and Zac weren’t going to get the drive out of Lukey so I decided to nail them on the run out of there. There’s only really two or three times you need to hard brake around this track on these bikes, Honda and MG corners, the rest of the time it’s all in the wrist. I learned from my mistakes and tried to put it all together for the win.”
Australian Supersport 300 Race Two Results
- Tom Edwards
- Reid Battye +0.061
- Zac Levy +0.069
- Drew Sells +13.301
- Brandon Demmery +13.485
- Jack Passfield +13.647
- Scott Nicholson +13.649
- Oli Bayliss +13.98
- Zackary Johnson +19.665
- Max Croker +20.623
- Ben Bramich +20.644
- Laura Brown +13.239 (+10-second jump-start penalty)
- Corey Briffa +25.444
- Yannis Shaw +25.467
- Ty Lynch +254.79
- Tyler Ferrari +25.563
- Luke Sanders +27.546
- Jarred Brook +27.702
- Hunter Ford +33.546
- Locky Taylor +38.177
