2003 Australian Superbike Championship - Round 4 - Queensland Raceway - Race 1

The Superbike battle during qualifying has been intense this weekend with only a tenth of a second covering the leading quartet. That quartet is of course comprised of the Nikon Yamaha squad and Team Suzuki. The protagonists, Giles, Coxhell, Stauffer and the irrepressible Curtain.

All four are Dunlop runners and clearly a step above the rest of the current field. The Honda boys not being able to make the impact they had hoped for thus far in the series. But that is taking nothing away from them or the class riders they field, Brookes and McCarthy, but the bike and rider combinations that form the front row are truly formidable at any level of racing throughout the world when it comes to production superbikes.

Both Yamaha boys got good runs off the line while the Suzukis were left standing! I didn't see what happened with the lights but something did not look quite right with how the field left the line so there may have been some sort of problem there.

As they negotiated the circuit for the first time it was the Nikon Yamaha duo up front with Kevin Curtain leading Joshua Brookes and Daniel Stauffer but a faller at turn two brought out the red flag as the leaders came on to the main straight to start the second lap. The Suzuki boys will be thankful of that red flag but Brookes will be cut up as he got an absolute flyer of a start!

The riders came around to form up on the grid once again where they were held for a couple of minutes as the turn two carnage was cleared, before being let out for another warm-up lap. No word came down on whether there would be a reduced race distance due to the extra laps but some of the bikes may get a little critical on fuel as they don't normally carry much more than they what they need to complete a race distance.

A cleaner start this time but Coxhell lost a lot of ground from the line as Curtain led them away from Giles and Brookes. Stauffer moved up to third at turn 4 after slotting past Brookes. Coxhell got Brookes for 4th early on the second lap and then got Stauffer at the next turn after the Nikon rider ran a little wide in turn 3.

Coxhell then put his head down in an effort to catch Curtain and Giles and recorded a 1-minute 10.7-second lap on the second time around the 3km circuit. Curtain and Giles also got down to the 1-minute 10s on the third lap while Dan Stauffer was riding hard to ensure he didn't get left behind.

Less than a second covered the leading trio at one-third race distance but it was still Curtain from Giles, with Coxhell slowly closing.

Curtain put together a consistent string of 1-minute 10.8-second laps to maintain his lead and had half a second on Giles by the halfway point of the 12 lap race.

Coxhell closed right up to Giles on lap 7 and was looking for a way past his more experienced team-mate but the speed difference between the two was not clear enough to make a safe, or friendly, pass.

Curtain took advantage of this to eke out a clear 1.4 second lead as they reached two-thirds race distance with continuing 1-minute 10.8-second laps while the Suzuki duo seemed to slacked off the pace a little before picking up the pace again on lap nine, but by this stage Curtain had a two second gap on his pursuers.

As they got the last lap board Coxhell was still on the tail of Giles and looking for a way past but unable to make a clear move, Giles may have been holding Coxhell up a little at some points on the circuit.

Curtain took a clear 2.1 second win over Giles with Coxhell third when the chequered flag came out at the end of lap 11, rather than the originally scheduled 12 due to the re-start. Hopefully they told the riders that was happening as nobody bothered to tell us mushrooms.