Daniel Stauffer reports from round 5 of the Australian SuperSport Championship (Oran Park)

Daniel Stauffer reports from round 5 of the Australian SuperSport Championship (Oran Park)

The final round of the Championship began well for us in the Suzuki Team. We concentrated on setup during Friday as we didn't get much track time the week before as we only tested in the Friday of the New South Wales Titles but didn't race that weekend.

Early on it was evident who was gonna be the major competition for the weekend, - Bairdy, Attard and Atchison were all on fire and doing really competitive times. Bairdy's Saturday qualifying time of 1:12.8 I think is probably the fastest time anyone has ever done around Oran Park, testimony that the track time Yamaha did here with the Formula Extreme and the NSW titles was paying off.

We came into the weekend 20 points clear of Bairdy for second in the championship, but with him on pole, that became 19.

Race 1: I managed to pull off a great start and after two laps had a 1 second lead, but Murphy's law came into play and the red flag came out due to a fallen rider over the bridge.

The restart saw Bairdy get a flyer, myself second, with Attard, Aitchison and Brookes close behind. With Bairdy in good form, I couldn't let him have it all his own way, so I passed in the dogleg on lap three. I knew it wouldn't be long before Bairdy came back through, and two laps later he did. With Bairdy in front, I had a 2 second gap back to Attard, so I tried to consolidate and finish a good second.

But Attard was too fast and passed me into Yamaha corner. Towards the end of the race, I thought Attard was going to pass Bairdy, but it wasn't so, and Bairdy took the win from Attard, with myself in third copping pressure from young Aitchison towards the final laps.

Going into race 2 the points difference between Bairdy and myself was down to 10. That meant I had to finish no lower than third to secure second in the championship. It wasn't going to be easy considering the stiff pace everyone was running at.

Once again Bairdy got a good start from Attard and my self. I was alongside Attard through the fast first kink , and clipped his bike going into turn 2. This made me run wide which allowed Brookes, my team mate Charlton and Donald all to go past me under the bridge. Brookesy and Bairdy I think were trading places up front while I struggled to get by a few riders before
the rain started falling.

Oran park is infamous for being slippery in the wet, so of course the inevitable happened and riders started to fall everywhere. When the red flag came out, I think there was about six bikes
down all over the place. The second part of the race was to be run on aggregate times combining the first half. This time I got the worst start I've ever had with most of the positions the same as the first half of the race. I found the track very slippery, but everyone else seemed to be able to go full pace.

I was surprised to look up at one stage and see that my team mate Scotty had taken the lead which was a good effort considering he qualified in 10th position. The guys up front were once again hard at it, and with one lap to go I was 6th and struggling. I decided I had nothing to lose and had to finish third. Luckily Attard was having clutch problems with his Honda and I swept past him at the end of the straight. I over cooked it a little and while trying not to run over Cam Donald, accidentally passed him into turn 2. Scotty was about 10 bike lengths in front of me so I tried to close the gap for a last corner pass.

Through the kink I was right on Scotty and stuck it under him in the last corner, from here I was lucky enough to finish third in the race which left me second in the championship by 1 point
from Bairdy.

Congratulations to Brookesy and Bairdy for the championship results. Thanks to Team Suzuki, Monza Imports and Tiger Angel for their exhaustive work and support throughout the year.