Josh Waters tops Friday practice at P.I. – SS and SS300 Qualifying results

ASBK 2023

Round One – Phillip Island – Friday

The first of the ASBK competitors on track this afternoon were the 26 riders contesting the 20-minute Supersport 300 qualifying session. Cameron Swain, Brodie Gawith and Jai Russo were the only three riders to sneak under the 1m50s barrier and thus that will be your front row for their opening race of the weekend this evening at 1705.  Full qualifying results can be found further down the page.

Just after 1330 the Supersport 600 competitors hit the track for their qualifying session and by this time of the day the track temperature was nearing 50-degrees and the ambient had just cracked 30-degrees.

Harrison Voight’s first lap was a 1m36.049, his next a 1m35.904, followed by a 1m35.528, just two-tenths from the Supersport qualifying lap record set here late last year by Senna Agius. Voight’s next lap was 1m36.016, followed by a 1m36.110. He then backed it off for a couple of laps, presumably negotiating traffic, before putting his head down again and cracking out a 1m35.962 before returning to the pits. He exited pit-lane again with five-minutes to run in the session but failed to better his benchmark.

Tom Bramich was eight-tenths behind Voight and will start from second on the grid when Supersport competitors line-up for their opening race of the weekend at 1015 Saturday morning. Alongside him on the front row will be Olly Simpson while Jack Passfield will head the second row despite a turn ten crash in that qualifying session.

Dallas Skeer was in doubt for this round after a hefty crash earlier this month during testing at SMP but will start from fifth. Category debutante Cameron Dunker rounds out that second row ahead of Jake Farnsworth, Sean Condon and defending champion John Lytras while Scott Nicholson rounds out the top ten.

The McMartin Racing pit crew were left some work to do in order to repair the damage from a turn two crash this morning.  Needless to say Josh Waters was on the spare bike for this 30-minute FP2 session.

Troy Herfoss was once again the first man out of pit-lane when the exit opened for Superbike FP2 at 1405 this afternoon and quickly got down to business with a 1m33.822, but that was immediately bettered by Mike Jones whose 1m33.068 improved on his FP1 time straight off the bat, he went quicker again on his next lap to improve to 1m32.784.  Lachlan Epis was the first victim of turn ten with a tip-over early on.

Josh Waters shrugged off the tumble from FP1 in fine fashion, his first flyer a 1m32.089 and the quickest lap of the day thus far but there was still 25-minutes left in the session. Would he give the 1m31.286 qualifying lap record he set here last year a shake…? Waters returned to the pits before exiting again to record a 1m32.527 and a 1m32.721 to add to his quicker of 1m32s.

With ten-minutes remaining in the session Waters remained on top ahead of the Yamaha Racing Team duo of Jones and Halliday, the McMartin Racing man seven-tenths ahead of Jones and nine-tenths ahead of Halliday. Bryan Staring was an encouraging fourth on the MotoGo Yamaha ahead of Penrite Honda’s Troy Herfoss. Glenn Allerton on a Kinderis prepared BMW was sixth ahead of Ted Collins on the Livson BMW. Broc Pearson was eighth on the DesmoSport Ducati, Max Stauffer ninth on the DoctorMak Yamaha while Arthur Sissis was rounding out the top ten.

Sissis was one of the late improvers though, jumping up to fifth place with four-minutes to run and Glenn Allerton improved to P4.  Broc Pearson then also improved to push Troy Herfoss further back to eighth.

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Herfoss improved in the dying seconds of the session to record a 1m33.356 at the chequered flag to go P5, pushing Staring back to sixth and Sissis to seventh.

On combined times it is still Waters in P1 but Halliday is P2 courtesy of his FP1 time and likewise Herfoss is P3 on the combined time-sheets on his FP1 time.

Superbike qualifying takes place at 0900 on Saturday morning while the first 12-lap bout is scheduled to get underway at 1140.

Superbike FP2

Superbike Friday Combined Times

Supersport 600 Qualifying

Supersport 300 Qualifying

Phillip Island WorldSBK/ASBK Race Schedule