This year’s Yamaha Motor Finance Australian Superbike Championship presented by Motul Pirelli will go down as one of the best in years, with the return of factory teams, a host of quality and competitive privateers, plus a management team that has been fixated on turning domestic racing around once and for all. For this month’s The Point feature on CycleOnline.com.au, we contacted the general manager of title sponsor YMF, plus three of the sport’s factory riders to get their take on the year gone by.

Image: Keith Muir.

Brad Ryan (Yamaha Motor Finance/Yamaha Motorcycle Insurance):
The answer is I think they’re heading in the right direction. Considering they’re still in rebuilding mode and considering they had yet another change in (MA) CEO early in the year and (MA) president more recently, they’ve managed to deliver six highly-competitive rounds, with a range of categories to suit almost everyone. Full credit to the ASBK team for pulling it off. The biggest thing for me is they (mostly) kept their promises during 2016. It may not sound like much, but in the heat of the moment (and it gets pretty hot) the sponsor’s needs are sometimes left behind. Simon [Maas], Peter [Doyle] and the team kept us informed at all times – especially if something wasn’t working out. We appreciated that. The job isn’t done of course, they always said they needed three years for the rebuild. But we (YMF and YMI) jumped on for the long ride, Yamaha has confirmed its support for another R3 Cup in 2017 given the success of 2016 and I know everyone is pushing hard for a 150(ish)cc junior programme. Plus more teams are committing to the top categories every day, so the signs are positive. My only remaining request is they find a way to make me quicker on the odd occasion they get me into leathers!

Troy Herfoss (Crankt Protein Honda Racing):
Basically, in my opinion, it didn’t go straight to the big-time, but everyone made a commitment and stuck to it, putting together a solid championship. Everything ran pretty smoothly, I think the TV worked out pretty good even if it would have been nice to get some live TV and we did have a livestream at the end. The championship took a step forward, so as long as we don’t go and turn everything upside-down for next year, if we build on what we’ve got, then it’s probably going in the right direction. I’ve seen over the years, particularly with supermoto, that it had a lot of interest when we first started and everyone was excited, trying to make it bigger than what it could be too soon. It turned in the wrong direction and went downhill fast. So, my opinion is that it was a nice and steady direction for the ASBK this year and I reckon they need to keep doing that to build a platform and get it to where we want it.

Image: Keith Muir.

Glenn Allerton (Yamaha Racing Team):
It seems like we’re heading in the right direction with the right people on board who understand the sport. They want to get the manufacturers on board and help grow the sport again, to get some sort of trust back into the governing body. But I still think we’ve got a long way to go because we only really have two manufacturers in it properly – Honda and Yamaha – so I feel like there is still a lot of work to do to get all manufacturers on board like the motocross has. It’s definitely going in the right direction though, the coverage that we got was really good and you can see the people at Motorcycling Australia are trying really hard. They’re basically starting at square one, so you have to understand that it’s not going to be an overnight success, and I feel like the TV package for me was really good. I like the way the sport’s going, I just wish we had a few more manufacturers involved with factory teams at the level Yamaha and Honda have been doing it.

Mike Jones (DesmoSport Ducati):
Look, I think the ASBK has definitely taken a step forward again this year. The biggest thing, the most important, is having the manufacturers involved and it’s good that Yamaha, Honda and Ducati are involved. It would be good to build upon that again next year and overall I believe it’s been a good championship. Also, what I like, is that the teams bring the best riders, because you want to be in the championship racing against the best guys and that’s where we were pretty much at this year, even if we could have some of the other top guys come across to build the competitiveness of the championship next year.