The Phillip Island weather more than lived up to its reputation on the weekend as round six of the Australian Superbike Championship (ASBK) saw four seasons in four minutes on many occasions, during a wild weekend of racing.
Back to a two-day format that means getting down to business quickly on Saturday was important, but that mattered little come Sunday as the clear blue skies and light winds turned dark, grey, windy and wet on Sunday. And that was just race one, race two had a wet track, but dry skies that had teams scratching their heads about bike set up.The weekend proved to be a tough for Mike Jones. He has admitted it has been a challenging track for him but to his credit, each trip to the Island in recent times has seen an improvement in his riding and his times.
He started strongly on Saturday and posted up a very respectable P3 in qualifying and felt comfortable with the pace he was able to set. But when the rain came in for race one, it turned from a race of pace to a race of survival.
Jones took a conservative approach and while riders may have had more speed, it kept a cool head in the slippery and at times treacherous conditions to take a fifth-place finish.
Race two took on a different completion where it was too wet to be dry but too dry to be wet. In the end, most riders went for slicks on a track that was clearly wet, fearing that the speed would be beyond that of wet tyres.
He struggled to get a feel for the track and the conditions in the early laps and slipped down the field and on the brink of falling out of the top ten. But with a handful of laps remaining, he recomposed himself and began to move forward, clawing his way to seventh.
His 5-7 results gave him fifth for the day and he managed to hang onto his second place in the championship.
“It wasn’t the weekend I was after and I’m disappointed with my results,” Jones laments. “In both races, the bike was in great shape, and I just wasn’t riding it to its potential and that’s on me. The team worked hard, and I let them down.
“Race one wasn’t too bad as there was no grip at all as the rain fell, so as riders went down around me, I just kept my pace and worked my way through it. Race two and I just needed to ride with more freedom. I wanted to be too precise on a track that needed you to hang it out a bit. I need to be better than that,” Jones ends.
It was a Yamaha debut of fire for Troy Herfoss. With just a handful of laps on the YRT R1M, Herfoss headed to Phillip Island with the idea to improve each time on the track and dial the bike into his needs.
And things were right on track on Saturday as he and the team massaged the bike to his liking and by free practice 3, Herfoss was setting a pace equivalent of any other bike he had raced at the iconic circuit.
But the joy was short lived as on Sunday and on a wet and slippery surface, Herfoss went down on the warmup lap, damaging the bike and being unable to race.
With a hectic schedule for the remainder of the year, Herfoss elected to sit out both races to look after his body and ensure he is ready to go for the upcoming races.
“I apologised to the team and felt like I had let them down,” Herfoss begins. “The team worked hard to get things ready for me in the lead up to Phillip Island and Saturday was such an enjoyable day as we kept making strides forward and the feeling on the bike was getting better.
“But we will be back, and I owe YRT some good results. I will be out to redeem myself at One Raceway,” he said.
The ASBK action picks back up again with round seven at One Raceway on October 3.
ASBK Results
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ASBK Results
Round Six – Phillip Island
Superbike
1st Josh Waters - 45
2nd Anthony West – 43
3rd Broc Pearson - 38
4th JJ Nahlous - 31
5th Mike Jones – 30 (Yamaha Racing Team)
6th Glenn Allerton - 29
7th Cameron Dunker - 25
8th Oscar O’Donavan - 24
9th Ryan Yanko - 22
10th Cru Halliday – 17
ASBK Championship Standings
1st Josh Waters - 306
2nd Mike Jones – 237 (Yamaha)
3rd Anthony West – 234 (Yamaha)
4th Glenn Allerton – 190
5th Broc Pearson - 185
6th Cameron Dunker – 175 (Yamaha)
7th JJ Nahlous – 172 (Yamaha)
8th Max Stauffer – 159 (Yamaha)
9th Jack Favelle – 152 (Yamaha)
10th John Lytras – 141 (Yamaha)