Wakefield Park ASBK Superbike form guide

ASBK 2022 Round Three – Wakefield Park
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Only Phillip Island has hosted more ASBK races in recent years than Wakefield Park, yet in all those contests at Wakefield since ASBK was essentially reinvented from season 2016, only two riders have been victorious at the Goulburn circuit, Troy Herfoss and Wayne Maxwell.  

A win apiece in 2016, same in 2017, same again in 2018, a double for Herf in 2019, then on Saturday at the double-header round in 2020 Herf again won both, while on the Sunday they shared the wins, then last year at Wakefield Park ASBK it was one each yet again.  

Wayne Maxwell set the lap record last year in race two on the Boost Mobile Ducati V4 R at 56.787, even quicker than the 56.920 qualifying record he had set on the Saturday when he pipped Herf for pole. 

This year Wayne Maxwell is again on the Boost Mobile Ducati and Troy Herfoss remains with Penrite Honda.  Maxwell was chasing set-up in Queensland but he believes they are now back up to speed after taking a wrong turn, Herfoss however doesn’t look to be back up to full speed yet.  We spoke to Wayne during testing at Wakefield Park earlier this month.

After that success for both Wayne and Troy at Wakefield Park ASBK last year, the series headed to Darwin’s Hidden Valley for their next outing, it was one where Herf’s world would get turned upside-down. That weekend in Darwin started out well enough, Herf setting a new Hidden Valley race lap record to pip Maxwell for victory in race one, but an accident at the start of race two left the then 34-year-old with the worst injuries of his career. He has clearly been struggling ever since but is no longer blaming his physical injuries for his lack of performance and is over making excuses. We spoke to Herfoss this week in the lead up to the round and will publish that interview shortly. Hopefully he can make that extra step forward and turn it around this weekend. 

Mike Jones has moved to the Yamaha Racing Team this season and it is a move that has paid dividends for the 28-year-old, and YRT.  The Queenslander is the only other rider apart from Maxwell and Herfoss to have dipped into the 56s at Wakefield, managing three 56.9s in succession on the DesmoSport Ducati last year while chasing Herfoss and Maxwell, but that pair managed to stretch away from him over the course of the final laps here last year. But this is a new year…

Jones gave YRT a dominant double at Queensland Raceway to break a long drought away from the winners circle for the official Yamaha outfit. The last rider to win a race on a Yamaha, or any other bike other than a Ducati or Honda, had been Aiden Wagner back in 2019, and on that occasion he was a Yamaha privateer, you have to go back even further for a victory recorded by the official Yamaha squad.

Jones is loving the Yamaha and it is loving him back. During testing at Wakefield Park earlier this month he looked fast from his first lap on the track. You could just see it in his body language and the attitude of the bike, I didn’t need a stop-watch to tell me he was on the pace. With Wayne’s DNF at Phillip Island and Bryan’s crash in Queensland, Mike has a handy 16-point lead heading into this weekend. 

After a tumultuous couple of years with BCperformance Kawasaki Bryan Staring has hit the ground running in 2022 after taking up the position Mike Jones vacated at DesmoSport Ducati. It was Bryan that ran Mike closest last month at QLD Raceway, and with the Western Australian on the same bike this year that Mike recorded 56s on at Wakefield Park ASBK last year, on his way to two podium finishes at the same venue, we know he is going to be in the mix.

NextGen BMW riders Josh Waters and Glenn Allerton are close to the top three, but not quite there yet. Josh was on the podium at the opening race in Queensland, but that was largely due to Bryan’s crash. He is adapting to the BMW pretty quickly though and his relief to be on a competitive bike once again is palpable. There has been little to separate Josh and Glenn so far this season, both are three-time Aussie Superbike Champions and seem to be only a tiny step away from getting on terms with current pacesetters Jones, Staring and Maxwell.

41-year-old Allerton won the last of his three titles in 2014 on a BMW, while 35-year-old Josh last took the #1 plate in 2017 on a Suzuki. That in itself brings up an interesting statistic, every rider that has won the Australian Superbike Championship since Jamie Stauffer last won in 2007, is still racing in ASBK today… 

Cru Halliday has shown good pace at Wakefield before, and pretty much everywhere else, but a win still eludes him on the Yamaha Superbike. No other rider knows the Yamaha Racing Team personnel and the YRT YZF-R1M better than Halliday, thus it must grate that Jones has walked into the team, stole his thunder and broke that drought for the team.  It is clear that YRT have stepped things up this year in regards to the amount of testing and preparation heading into the season, and they have not let up. A rare mechanical failure in Queensland’s second race though has cost Halliday dearly in the championship chase. With 54-points he is still far from out of the hunt, there is a lot of racing still to go in season 2022, but without that bike failure it could have been a YRT 1-2 at the top of the championship points standings when we left Queensland…

Arthur Sissis struggled a little at the Phillip Island season opener compared to how he finished off season 2021 at The Bend, but was not too far off the front runners in Queensland. He has stayed on the bike in all four bouts contested so far this year and has been collecting good points on each outing. Sissis needs to make some more progress if he is to get in the battle for podiums at every round. He has a huge amount of experience under his belt on smaller bikes on the international stage, but not so much on a Superbike. He has what looks like a well funded effort behind him and the team looks to be making steps forward.  At only 26-years-old he could have a lengthy career still to run in ASBK, and seems to be on the cusp of making that next step. It just seems a matter of when, could it be this weekend?

Another well organised South Australian privateer effort is run by the Falzon family, with youngest son Daniel the one in the hot seat, while older brother Jon and long-term friend Liam Wilkinson help work on and develop the bike, along with more than a little help from mum and dad. Daniel was busted up quite bad in an accident at The Bend 2021 season finale and was still far from strong at the season opener while also shaking down a bike with MoTeC for the first time. Getting married kept him from the qualifying session in Queensland thus he had to start from the rear of the grid. Sunday was a matter of staying safe and trying to bag some points to keep them in the hunt for the rest of the season ahead. They were rewarded with 20-points which when added to their 31-points from Phillip Island sees them eighth in the championship chase, but only 19-points from second place… They should be stronger this weekend, but the question is how strong….? 

There is one fella arriving at Wakefield Park this weekend after putting in more laps last weekend than most of the competition have done in the previous 12 months, and that includes testing! Anthony West put in around 400 laps of LeMans last weekend when contesting the 24 Heures Motos for the privateer MACO Racing Yamaha squad in the opening round of the FIM World Endurance Championship.  Westy covered almost 1700 kilometres in the race and it will be interesting to see what sort of shape he is in for this weekend after that sort of ordeal, followed by 30 hours of airports and planes to get home.  

On one memorable weekend at Wakefield Park a few years ago (2016), Westy was a last-minute call-up to stand in for an injured Jamie Stauffer at Team Honda, and with no testing on the bike or real experience at Wakefield Park he finished second to Troy Herfoss in both races. That was Westy’s first race in ASBK since winning the 250 Production Championship in 1998, after which he had headed on to a long International career that included many years in the 125, 250 and 500 cc and MotoGP ranks along with stints in World Supersport, before his career was derailed after testing positive to stimulants. 

Once the second of those bans was served he joined a privateer Yamaha effort in ASBK last year put together by Melbourne motorcycle dealer Patrick Li.  To say the machine was uncompetitive would actually be underplaying just how bad it was for Westy last year. It was a constant struggle to just keep the machine running and I actually couldn’t believe he persevered with it. This season the team seem to have given him a bike that isn’t cutting out or overheating every time he goes out on it, they finally seem to be making some headway. Hopefully we some signs of more progress this weekend. 

The big budget and well staffed new privateer effort in the paddock, 727 Moto, with Superbike rookie Broc Pearson alongside seasoned campaigner Jed Metcher, looked to be getting somewhere in Queensland. Metcher qualified in tenth but the Victorian then failed to finish either race. Pearson finished 12th in both outings at Queensland, but was more than 30-seconds down on the leaders by the end of the 16-lap races. Like many that weekend, they failed to replicate the speed they had shown during testing, as grip levels on the race weekend were markedly less than they had experienced during testing.

Mark Chiodo looks to be making progress this year with his privateer Yamaha and managed to dip into the 68s during the races in Queensland, half-a-second quicker than he had qualified, but he was still two-seconds a lap down on the leaders over the full race distance.  It will be interesting to see if he can make further progress this weekend at a track that is quite technical. 

Kawasaki privateer Matt Walters had a nightmare of a weekend in Queensland, chasing braking issues all weekend and ultimately failed to finish a race. He will be hoping he can put those problems behind him and get back inside the top ten, as we have seen him do so often before. 

Superbike rookie Max Stauffer is confident that he has made some strides forward in finding a set-up that can get him more comfortable and allow the 18-year-old to start making some real progress. This weekend will be an important one for them to gauge that progress. We spoke to Max and Jamie recently in the lead up to this round. 

Chandler Cooper, Hamish McMurray and Mike Edwards round out a 19-rider grid with privateer Aiden Wagner missing from the entry list for this round.

One rider and team that thoroughly want to put the opening two rounds of the season behind them is Lachlan Epis and the BMW Alliance Racing squad. After an extensive pre-season testing program that had Lachy and the crew brimming with confidence, they have failed to register a single point in the championship standings. 

DNFs from both races at Phillip Island, then in Queensland another DNF along with a 14th place finish, only for that and its seven-points to be then taken from the team after they were subsequently disqualified from the results. Race scrutineers deemed them to have non homologated firmware loaded into the ECU of the BMW M 1000 RR. The team appealed that disqualification as there is nothing stated in any ASBK regulations that prevented them from selecting the PRO firmware over the STK firmware in the BMW ECU. The primary difference between the two is the availability of sector based tuning. 

However, when some other bikes on the grid are permitted to use that level of functionality in their electronics package, I can’t see a reason why BMW competitors should be prevented from accessing the same features. I have been unable to find any written rule or regulation preventing the use of the PRO firmware that comes as part of the nominated ECU package put forward by BMW, and BMW Australia have supported the team in this matter. As of now Motorcycling Australia consider the case closed, the team do not.  Everyone needs clarity, and if these things were spelt out in black and white in the first place then we would have no grey areas.

This is by no means a clear cut case of cheating via different size throttle bodies or a ported cylinder head, it is simply the ticking of one box or the other in the electronics set-up, where nothing that is promulgated in the rules states that box should not be ticked. 

These are all growing pains for the championship in this new electronic age brought on by the increasing competitiveness and burgeoning brand that is ASBK. Put simply, a control ECU can’t come soon enough. 

Interestingly, some teams are also starting to make some noises about putting restrictions on the amount of testing that can be done during the season.  

Many point to BSB as the yardstick for a successful national Superbike competition.  BSB has a control ECU, control tyres, and allows virtually no testing outside of the couple of official organised tests, and last weekend 23 riders qualified within a second.  Of course there are numerous other advantages that BSB has over us, and we are not going to become as big and successful as BSB through any simple changes to the rules, but that shouldn’t stop us looking to and hopefully learning from their experience and success. 

Anyway, let’s get back on the topic of Wakefield Park ASBK, this weekend should be a cracker with so many interesting story lines yet to pan out. As normal, we will do our best to follow those plots over the course of the weekend and fill you in right here. 

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