CycleOnline presents a second special Race Recap today to review the efforts of Next Gen Motorsports’ BMW rider Glenn Allerton at Queensland Raceway.

Allerton swept the first point-scoring event of the season and showed devastating form early in the Ipswich weekend. It came close to being a perfect outing, if not for a small technical mishap that saw the 2011 champion have to switch to his second bike with moments to spare before the final race.

We find out how Allerton feels the weekend went and why he believes he is still the one to beat in the race for the 2013 Australian Superbike Championship crown.

Glenn Allerton set the opening days’ pace at Queensland Raceway by a comfortable margin on his BMW HP4. Image: Andrew Gosling/TBG Sport.

Queensland Raceway was another near perfect weekend for you. In terms of points, you still scored the equal highest for the round – how important has this been to your overall championship goal?

Yeah very important. Every time you want to go racing you want to bring in a maximum points haul and we managed to get just as many points as everyone else did. I think it’s something that a few people on other teams failed to understand – they only just tied me, they didn’t actually win the round. They won on a count back so tying me on points isn’t beating me or dominating me. For our championship we’re well on track. I was fastest in every single session all weekend, qualified on pole position and totally dominated race one in what I thought was an easy race for me to win. To ease out such a big gap is really confidence-inspiring for me.

While your opening race win was comfortable, your performance in the second race – from last on the grid to fourth on the opening lap – was one of the most talked-about topics from the weekend. Can you fill us in on the initial issue and have you been able to find out any more about the problem in the days following the event?

It’s just basically a little electronic sensor that broke on the warm-up lap, and once that happened the bike won’t rev over 8000 rpm. It’s more of a safety thing so that the motorbike doesn’t hurt itself. When we rode on the spare bike I actually ran out of brakes after a few laps because I was having such a big go. It’s a little part and we’ve come up with a contingency plan to fix that and actually service that problem in a hurry if it ever happens again and just make it happen really fast. We’re well on top of it.

I don’t think there’s anybody in Australia that could have come from the back of the grid to P4 in three-quarters of a lap the way that I did. I guess that just shows where we’re at in terms of the speed. To be honest with you through the middle part of that race I was actually surprised by the guys in front of me and their lack of pace through that race. I had a motorbike that didn’t really want to accelerate off the corners and down the straights and was probably only using about 80 percent of the power.

Apart from the fact the front brakes went on me I think I would still have had a pretty strong chance of winning. If anything the result further underlines our dominance. If you look back at the race at Tassie I won the race by close to three seconds, and then race one here I won by three seconds also. I had everything thrown at me and I still managed to catch the leaders – it’s a strong position.

Allerton feels the weekend’s result only underlines just how strong the BMW HP4 package and Pirelli tyre is. Image: Andrew Gosling/TBG Sport.

You had to use your second bike for that race – just how different is that bike and what were some of the challenges you came across during the race?

You can never really make two bikes exactly the same. We’re going to work at lot harder at the next few tests to make sure the spare bike is identical to the number one bike. We just had a small issue in terms of how the electronics are set up on the spare bike. The primary use of the spare bike is for the wet. You use a lot of traction control for grip in the wet. It was just because there was so much on the line and no chance to prepare the motorbike in the three-minute window to be a dry bike.

I can’t see how anybody on that grid believes they have bridged the gap to me at all. If anything I’d be having a good hard look at myself and thinking that Glenn actually got further away from us. I had a lot left in the tank in race one, and I did it all from the front, I didn’t chase anybody all weekend – I did the donkey work.

Eastern Creek is the next track on the calendar in August, with the official ASBK test set for this Thursday. You’ve done plenty of laps there in the past – do you go there with any particular objectives to tick off?

We’ve got a few little things to try, some new parts from Germany for our motorbike that should make it a lot better. It’s a track I really enjoy – it’s my home track and it’s nice and close to where I’m based. I love the fast, flowing nature of it and the long time spent on the side of the tyre going from left to right. You’ve got to link all the corners together which actually suits my riding style, and I can’t wait to get there because I’m going to set what happened in race two straight. I think there’s going to be a lot of hard thinking going on behind the scenes at the end of Thursday.

Thanks for the chat Glenn!