CycleOnline.com.au polls the current Australasian Supersport Championship series leader on a host of racing topics.

Image: Keith Muir.

The value of competing in the Asian Road Racing Championships…

I do like the Asian Series, it’s sort of another link to the world. The main reason we went over there is because we had a couple of contacts there from years back when I raced there. And it’s a little bit cheaper to go over there and race than go to BSB or anything like that. You need some money to get to Asia but definitely not as much as going over to England. The tracks in the Asian Series are good, to a point, like Malaysia which obviously has a high standard. But when we raced in India we had to take our own food, because we were two hours from any main town! They’re just small things I suppose, all in all, it’s a good chance to get more time in against different competitors.

Working on customer bikes during the day and his own bike by night…

The shop mainly sells scooters and tyres so that’s what we’re working on for the majority of the day, along with motocross bikes and that. Throughout the day there’s nothing too special going on, but at night we’re always working on preparation to get the race bike sorted. There’s only so much time in a day and lots of little things to do to get them sorted. It’s mainly suspension stuff really, tinkering and making improvements from the last time out on track. I like doing it, for sure, I’ve been doing it for nearly six years so I’ve done plenty of it and it can get hectic! It’s good fun. And knowing you’ve prepared your own bike you can be reasonably confident with it. If you make a mistake, well, it’s all down to you.

Having his dad, Graham, as a mentor…

It’s always handy having dad, from set up, to being on the track, pretty much all round. He’s always there to keep me calm and relaxed, I can get a bit worked up – probably not as much these days though! Even last time I was at the track down at a test at Wakefield it was just the little thing like giving dad a call and seeing what he reckoned I should do with suspension. It’s all advice and knowledge that you build on. Dad helps along the way and chips in where he can, I wouldn’t be where I am without him, so it definitely helps a lot.

The close competition of the Supersport front-runners…

It’s good racing with Aiden [Wagner] and Cal [Callum Spriggs]; it’s close racing and safe racing. You can race bar-to-bar with them all day long. You obviously don’t give each other a lot of room but you give each other the room to stay on the road. There’s that level of trust there. They’ve kind of been the main competition there as you know along with Daniel Falzon, so we’ll see how the rest of it plays out. Plus there’s the other guys that are consistently quick as well. I’m certain it will be super close right to the end.

Image: Alex Gobert.

The track he’d most like to race on in the world…

I’d have to say Portimao, with the huge ups and downs. A lot of the corners look cool, with the elevation changes. The corner onto the straight looks awesome. The elevation changes create the blind and cambered corners, which are fun. Even Sepang wasn’t a bad track, with racing half of it. Turn two was almost completely blind, and you’re tipping in from five metres out and you can’t actually see any of the ripplestrip until you’re a metre away from it. The drop is massive! Anything like that is fun; it’s more exciting to ride and creates that much more a challenge.

Preference for the 600 or the 1000…

We went to the 1000 in 2011, I think I qualified fourth on my first time out. I didn’t do too badly, but I didn’t do great. We did a few rounds on that and then I started riding a Ducati. At that point things were working, I was riding fast and we were looking like we’d ride that bike for a while but then the funding ended up falling. We went with the ZX-10 for a bit the next year but struggled so much with the suspension so made some changes there. Then Yamaha offered us another deal with the 600 which was much more reasonable. It’s so much cheaper testing-wise. When you’re testing on a 1000 it just eats tyres. I normally go testing on my tyres from a race weekend, but the the 1000 your tyres are just gone. There is a chance we’ll be stepping up next year, I don’t think we’ll be staying in 600s. We’re working on that and of course a large piece of that is working out funding.

2015 plans: ASC, ASBK or both…

I really don’t know too much about the ASBK for next year. I haven’t read too much into it just yet. I’m not entirely sure. I do like the ASBK tracks, because they’re the faster and more flowing tracks, but for some reason I go better at the tighter, more technical tracks. It’s not that I don’t like Wakefield, Mallala and Winton, and I have gone well there, but I’d rather be going fast! But on 2015, well, I’m not entirely sure. We will wait and find out more details on the calendar and dates. It would be ideal if we could do both. But I guess than all comes back to budget.