Wayne Maxwell Interview
Ride Rage Radio talk to 2014 Swann Australasian Superbike Champion Wayne Maxwell
RRR: Wayne Maxwell, firstly welcome to the show and congratulations on a fantastic season but once again, you’ve said that Eastern Creek is sort of like a home track for you and a great, big crowd of people out there cheering on the Wayne Train, and none bigger than the Wayne Train Fan Club just next to the main straight grandstand.
Wayne: “What a weekend. Things really didn’t start off that great and weren’t really going my way, I was fast in the opening session, but never really went anywhere, just sort of stayed there like that.
“Dunlop had a new control tyre and that sort of threw a spanner in the works, we didn’t know if it was the tyre or the setting or anything like that, so we just worked away at it, but thankfully everything went good enough to secure two championships.”
RRR: All year you’ve taken the racing on Saturday as seriously as you appear to take the racing on Sunday, and that was what allowed you to probably have a little bit more of a buffer in that championship to take home the victory on Saturday, but on Sunday things didn’t really go according to plan, especially in race one, when I think you had a false neutral and ended up off the track at turn one, the fastest corner on the circuit?
Wayne: “Yeah. I got a great start, I needed to get a good start, because Jamie had pace all weekend, especially on the new tyres, so needed to get a good start in the first race and I got that right and had a reasonable opening lap, lost a little bit of time to Jamie but I took it fairly conservatively just to get through it.
“Then first flyer into turn one got a false neutral and that definitely threw a spanner in the works, there were a few words being uttered inside my helmet at that point, but once I got it settled down and managed to miss the fence at the end of it, and got back on track we strung together a really good race and in my mind that made me think, ‘Well, I’ve got the pace and yeah, we can press on.’”
RRR: This year we’ve seen so many great riders covered by so little time in all of the races, and to end up I think at the back of the field and fight back through the field to where you did and the guys that you were overtaking are all actually guys that have either won Australian championships, won state championships, Robbie Bugden’s won five New Zealand Superbike Championships. And you had to battle through all of those guys to get back inside that top 10 and get those points that you did.
Wayne: “That’s right and full credit to my team. Warren made the bike obviously pretty good and as I said we were struggling there at one point, obviously the changes we made were good enough and the bike was fairly easy to ride and I was obviously half riding alright, I’ve had good success at Sydney Motorsport Park in the past. But I wouldn’t say I was at my best on the weekend, luckily I had a great team around me to support me and get me through it.”
RRR: When you went out in the third race on Sunday though, did you do an Andrew Pitt and have all the mathematics worked out before you went out? That if Jamie finished here, you need to finish there, or what was going through your mind? Because it seemed as the race went on, you realised that Jamie wasn’t actually going to win the race, you then seemed to take it a little bit more conservatively to make sure that you made it to the finish, and were only going to drop a couple of points to him, just being I think two places behind.
Wayne: “Yeah, 100 per cent. At one point there I had the pace of the front guys but they’d gotten away in the first few laps, I had just been going very conservatively on the open laps, trying to just stay out of trouble and you know the way some of the proper were riding, it’s contract time and there were a lot of guys riding way over their head and I nearly got caught up in one of those incidents so that’s the last thing I wanted to happen.
“So just took it easy and got through the first opening laps and then settled into a rhythm and once I got to Glenn it was difficult to overtake, his bike was super fast in the straight and around the back of the circuit he was struggling with it a bit so that’s all I could do, was just stay there.
“But my main concern when I thought Jamie was still at front was I had a 0 second gap, and then 1 and then 2 second gap on my board, and then it went 2, 1, back to 0, and I was like, ‘Crikey, I don’t know how many bikes are in this group,’ so the last lap or so I just made my bike really wide and made sure I got a good run out of the last turn and tried to get some sort of draft off Glenn and it was enough to get it done.
“Super happy to go back to back, or not really back to back, but to go win two different championships in two different teams.”
RRR: Well the other thing was, that there are two completely different regulations in both of those championships, a point that you made in your speech on Sunday night at the Swann Series presentation.
Wayne: “You know, the riding style is a lot different on these standard (ASC-FX) bikes, and eventually we were able to adapt back to that and yeah, it was great and a full testament to the team, obviously they gave me a bike that was awesome all year, and my mechanic Warren was the only thing that didn’t change, that winning for me obviously continued this year.”
RRR: An excellent point ,and I guess when you’ve got teammates like the calibre that you did this year with Jamie Stauffer, Troy Herfoss and Josh Hook, you need every card stacked in your corner to be pretty much an ace really, don’t you?
Wayne: “Yeah, 100 per cent, those guys are world class riders, we’ve seen young Hooky go off and do some things, so I mean there’s plenty of talent still in Australia, Australian motorsport is well and truly alive with the depth and the abilities and hopefully we’re going to see some big things come over the next couple of years with Australians making a bit of a resurgence back into the championship.”
RRR: It was great to see you take that championship, Wayne, great to go back to back in the two championships throughout the year and it’s been a pleasure to watch you for this entire season, so congratulations on that and thanks very much for providing us with a great spectacle all year, well done!
Wayne: No worries and thanks for the support from you guys, it’s been awesome as usual and yeah, hopefully I’ll have some good news on the direction of where we’re going to go for 2015 shortly.
RRR: I’m sure you will, thanks Wayne!
