Wayne Maxwell tops Wakefield Park ASBK QP1
By Trevor Hedge
As the morning fog lifted off Wakefield Park this morning competitors were greeted with an almost perfect sunny morning with temperatures in the mid 20s as the 21-strong Yamaha Motor Finance Australian Superbike field hit the track for their first qualifying session this morning.
A minor red flag incident caused the session to be temporarily halted, throwing some people’s strategy to try and get a clear track on a fresh tyre clean out the window.
With no control tyre in ASBK, unlike the Dunlop control tyre in the rival Swann Australasian Superbike Championship, the tyre war, and strategy battle is on in earnest throughout every session.
Herfoss’ teammate, Anthony West, who was a last-minute call up to the Crankt Protein Honda squad to replace the injured Jamie Stauffer, did not use fresh rubber in QP1 to set his quick lap time.
Maxwell ran second to Herfoss by a fraction of a second on Friday, but this morning it was the newly minted to fatherhood 33-year-old that this time pipped Herfoss to the top of the timesheets. Wayne’s 57.513 came on the 11th of his 17 laps, the short 2.2km circuit posing plenty of traffic problems as riders fought for a clean run, while others tried to get a tow from faster riders, and those fast riders then tried to avoid towing those slower riders…. Fun and games….
Herfoss was second quickest, only five-hundredths of a second behind Maxwell, while Allerton was third and only a further two-hundredths behind Allerton. All three fast men putting in a 57.5, with the order then split down at the second decimal point. Nothing in it then…
Anthony West is impressing Crankt Protein Honda boss Paul Free with his feedback and seems to be fitting into the team quite well. Westy sat on the bike for the first time yesterday, and hasn’t ridden this short, but quite technical circuit since he was a kid, nearly two decades ago. West put in a massive 23-laps in this morning’s session as he familiarised himself with the machine and came in and out of pitlane numerous times for a little click here, a little click there, it all paid dividends with the 34-year-old carding a 58.082, good enough for fourth quickest. Almost half-a-second behind the front trio, but as mentioned earlier, West did not run a new rear slick in the session, unlike most other riders. Thus, Westy is a lot closer to that leading trio than the timesheet suggests.
Cru Halliday put in 13 laps with a quickest of 58.266 to finish the session fifth ahead of Mike Jones, Brayden Elliott, Ben Burke and the New Zealand Suzuki duo of Sloan Frost and Ryan Hampton rounded out the top ten. A significant 3.2-seconds covers the top ten, a massive amount on a short track with a sub-minute lap time.
Daniel Falzon fell early in the session. The South Australian was unhurt but chose to sit out the remainder of the session thus ended the session 11th quickest with a time that is hardly representative of his pace. Falzon will be in the hunt for at least a second row start when final qualifying gets underway late this afternoon. QP2 is scheduled for 1430 before the top six riders then have a Superpole run-off around 1530.
