Maxwell tops Saturday Superbike Timed Practice at Morgan Park

ASBK 2022 – Round Five
Morgan Park – Superbike Timed Practice

After a pretty much wasted day here on Friday due to inclement weather, that continued well into the night, there was a break in the rain this morning ahead of what looked like would be a fine day ahead, but the deluge overnight had left the Morgan Park Raceway soaked.

The lack of useful laps on Friday for competitors will of course hurt the riders with the least preparation and testing here ahead of this round. And some of those recent private tests and ride days were also plagued with weather interruptions. Thus some of the riders are really flying a bit blind here this weekend when it comes to recent track experience with the current race package they are running in 2022.

There had been a proposal put forward to split this practice session, to allow teams more time to tweak their set-up considering how much practice time was lost on Friday. This proposal was overwhelmingly supported by the majority of Superbike riders, but as a couple of riders elected not to support the change, and thus a complete consensus to the schedule change was not arrived at, the schedule remained as originally promulgated. We believe the three hold-outs against the change were championship leader Mike Jones, DesmoSport Ducati’s Bryan Staring and Penrite Honda’s Troy Herfoss. They could have made that decision on the back of feeling confident and ready to race, thus gaining an advantage over others less prepared, and/or just to mess with the heads of their competitors, all those aforementioned reasons of course are perfectly valid.

The Superbike category got on track at 1040 this morning for that single 40-minute Timed Practice session. The top nine from which automatically progress through to the afternoon 15-minute Q2 session that will decide the final grid line-up for Sunday’s two 16-lap races.  Riders that do not make the top nine cut-off will complete in a 15-minute Q1 session, the top three from that then progress through to Q2.

Luckily there had been enough wind over the course of the morning to dry the track better than anyone had a right to expect. There were still plenty of dark patches, and some standing water alongside the main straight, but overwhelmingly the track was now mainly dry and thus slicks were the only real option. Still, many riders were in no rush to head out.

Troy Herfoss and Anthony West were a couple of the first to head out and explore the track conditions, and by his fourth lap Herfoss was down to low 15s, 2.5-seconds off his lap record here, but the track would only get better from here.

Wayne Maxwell went out with 28 minutes remaining in the session and immediately lowered today’s benchmark to 1m14.086. More than a few riders were still happy enough to stay in the pit-lane and let the other riders circulate and dry the track further before going out to try and secure their place in Q2.

At the halfway point of the session, neither YRT rider had set a lap-time. We touched on how important tyre longevity will be here tomorrow in our opening report from Morgan Park yesterday, and of course that is front of mind for competitors today as their tyre allowance is now in play.  That was obviously not worrying Anthony West, as he recorded lap after lap, after lap.

Championship leader Mike Jones headed out with 15-minutes left in the session and started to get a feel for the condition of the circuit.

Wayne Maxwell had by this time lowered the marker to 1m13.693, and Broc Pearson was P2 on the back of a 1m14.217.  Jones then dropped in a 1m14.313 to go P2. With less than ten minutes remaining that was the top three. Staring was P4 ahead of Sissis, West, Metcher, Herfoss and Halliday while Glenn Allerton rounded out the top ten.

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With six minutes to go the pace started to pick up. Maxwell down to 1m13.586, Jones into second on 1m13.889, Herfoss up to third on 1m13.948.  That top three remained the same with only two-minutes left on the clock.  Pearson was fourth, Staring fifth, Halliday sixth, Sissis seventh, Allerton eighth and West the final automatic Q2 graduate in ninth ahead of Jed Metcher and Lachlan Epis.

And that was how it remained at the chequered flag.  Jones had gone P2 with half the amount of laps on his tyres as Maxwell or Herfoss had done, and less than anyone else in the field…

The order might not stand as we present below though… There is a cloud over Pearson, Walters and Herfoss as they are being investigated for potential breaches of technical regulations. We believe the issue might be down to the marking of tyres.  We will fill you in as it pans out…

Alpinestars Superbike Saturday Timed Practice

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Alpinestars Superbike Championship Points Standings

Michelin Supersport Q1

Dunlop Supersport 300 Q1

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ASBK Morgan Park Schedule

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2022 ASBK Calendar