Wayne Maxwell on Wakefield Park
We caught up with Yamaha Racing Team’s Wayne Maxwell at Wakefield Park after the second round of the YMF Australian Superbike Championship had been played out on the 2.2km circuit. Maxwell takes us through his race weekend, with the opening bout a distinct low, while race two was a great triumph for the 33-year-old.
Maxwell is currently third in the championship, 13-points behind YRT teammate Glenn Allerton, and 15-points behind series leader Troy Herfoss.
“All weekend we had reasonable pace. We topped some of the sessions, but the first race just…You know I wasn’t aggressive enough….. I need to be more aggressive early on. I knew I had reasonable pace and I was just sort of settling in, and I was just following to see where the race took us.
“Then Westy got involved and he didn’t quite have the pace, and he was just trying to hang in there. Unfortunately that lost me the front group. When I got past Westy I needed to string together some consistent laps together. And to be honest looking at it afterwards, I wouldn’t have caught Troy, I just wanted to keep him honest, but I just tucked the front at turn five.
“Once you get into about mid race distance the tyre seems to move around a lot. That’s something we will have to work on. We have another tyre option and where just going to have to try and test that. It’s a little bit harder which suits these kind of warmer conditions. But to be honest, I’m not sure if we are going to see this sort of temperature again. Maybe in Perth and perhaps Queensland. We have a lot of races across winter.
“We will just keep chipping away. We are a little bit on the back foot, but we will just keep trying to improve. We just need to get the most out of it for the weekend.
“Race two was great. I knew I could get to the front, I got there but made a mistake and then lost some of the advantage. I knew it was Westy there, and I knew what kind of race he was riding, it played into my hands and held the other boys up. It would have been great to have Troy and Glenn then as it would have been one hell of a race for the fans. But I’m more than happy to take the win. I’m not sure on the Championship position and how it all worked out, but I’m hoping we can start to claw a few back to make it an exciting championship.”
