Superbike
Reigning Australian Superbike
Champion Jamie Stauffer continued his amazing form from last
season when the YMF Loan sponsored Australian Superbike
Championship kicked off at Eastern Creek last month. While
Yamaha and Suzuki have all new one-litre class weapons for 2007,
they are yet to be unleashed on Australian racetracks. Both
manufacturers have continued racing their 2006 machines while
they wait for race kit parts to fit their new 2007 machines.
Any notion that over the off season competitors might have
closed the edge to Stauffer and the Yamaha R1 was quickly
dismissed at Eastern Creek during qualifying when Jamie
proved more than a second quicker than any other rider in the
field. The timed Saturday session had shown a slight chink in
Team Yamahas armour though as both Jamie and Dan Stauffer
crashed in the dying minutes of final qualifying.
Honda had suffered with tyre problems throughout 2006 and their
switch to Pirelli for 2007 produced an encouraging start to the
season with Russell Holland and WA youngster Bryan Staring
qualifying second and third quickest.
On race day, however, the Stauffer brothers made no mistakes as
they romped home to a Yamaha 1-2 in both Superbike bouts.
Staring took third place in race one for Honda while Adam
Fergusson rode his Dunlop-shod Fireblade to a podium result in
the second race.
This weekend Winton Motor Raceway is playing host to a new
format double-header of the series with both rounds two and
three of the eight round calendar unfolding at the tight 3km
circuit that makes its home in North-Eastern Victoria, just
south of the snow country. However, the opening day of practice
had very little in common with any snow country! The ambient
temperature approached 35°C and the track temperature nudged
50°C. So hot were the conditions that race team mechanics were
even burning their hands on the chains of the Superbikes while
fitting new rubber.
Another hot topic at Winton is the rubber war itself. Team
Kawasaki had been the only top flight Superbike effort to run
Michelin rubber at the season opener but Team Green are racing
this weekend with Dunlop rubber on both their ZX-6R and ZX-10R
machines. Apart from the Pirelli shod factory Honda team Dunlop
runners now make up virtually the rest of the field.
Opening practice saw Team Yamaha again stamp their authority on
proceedings with the Stauffer brothers more than half a second
ahead. After second practice however Team Suzuki’s Shawn Giles
was less than a tenth behind the Yamaha duo and Honda’s Bryan
Staring showed that Pirelli could put up with the heat by ending
the session fourth quickest, only a fraction behind Staring. Kawasakis change to Dunlop obviously agreed with Wayne
Maxwell was the Kawasaki man was fifth quickest, only hundredths
of a second behind Staring. Four manufacturers in the top five
covered by only four-tenths of a second certainly bodes well for
an exciting weekend ahead.
In fact the entire top ten are covered by only a single second
after day one with Charlton (Yamaha) sixth ahead of Allerton
(Honda), Johnson (Kawasaki), Holland (Honda) and Fergusson
(Honda). Suzuki duo Craig Coxhell and Robert Bugden sit just
outside the top ten with Etheridge (Yamaha), Gobert (Kawasaki)
and Roe (Honda) rounding out the top 15.
Supersport
The Yamaha and Dunlop
domination continued in the 600cc Supersport category this
year. Jamie Stauffer claimed pole position and three race
victories ahead of teammates Jason O'Halloran and Jeremy Crowe
at the season opener.
Joshua Waters showed good form on the GSX-R600 to challenge the
Yamaha horde at times in an encouraging sign of things to come.
Honda debuted its all-new 2007 CBR600RR at Eastern Creek and
raced it in largely standard form as they await the availability
of race kit parts for their new weapon.
Honda need more parts though if they are going to challenge the
well developed Yamaha this weekend. Winton is proving
agreeable to Team Yamaha with Jason O’Halloran, Jamie Stauffer
and Jeremy Crowe topping the leaderboard in that order after the
opening day of practice. Bryan Staring (Honda) was only 3-tenths
behind the Yamaha horde with Joshua Waters (Suzuki) and Wayne
Maxwell (Kawasaki) also on the pace to make it four different
manufacturers in the top six. Jeremy Crowe raced at round one
with a painful hand injury but is now fully fit and hoping to
put one over his teammates here this weekend. O’Halloran’s
chart topping 1m24.093 was less than a second off Jamie
Stauffer’s Superbike time and would have been good enough to
place him 11th in the Superbike field ahead of such notable
names as Coxhell, Bugden and Gobert.
Superstock
In the Superstock category, a
dominant performance by 25-year-old Ben Henry on his Witch
Cycles Suzuki GSX-R600 at round one has put him 15 points ahead
in the race for the national Superstock title. Suzuki
were completely dominant at the opening round with the top four
points scorers for the weekend all mounted onboard GSX-R600
machines. I predicted then that Yamaha would not like that state
of affairs and would seek to turn that around and sure enough
top of the timesheets on day one at Winton is Stafford Yamaha
backed Charles Hern. The next four are all Suzuki mounted
however with Henry the quickest GSX-R pilot ahead of Brayden
Carr, Tim Cowie and Michael Riddle.
Day One Times from Winton
Superstock -
Naked/Twins -
Supersport -
FX Cup -
Superbike -
FZ6 Cup -
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