DesmoSport Ducati press release:

An encouraging weekend resulted in little reward for DesmoSport Ducati at Winton’s third round of the 2017 Australian Superbike Championship (ASBK) today.

After qualifying 11th on the grid, rookie Callum Spriggs was carrying high hopes into the pair of 16-lap races this afternoon, but was ruled out of the opening encounter with a broken exhaust on lap 11 while in 13th place.

In race two he returned to claim 14th position aboard the Panigale 1299 S for seven championship points, resulting in 16th overall for the weekend. He’s currently P19 in the standings.

“In the first race the exhaust split and that put us out of that one, so that set us back a bit,” Spriggs said. “In the second one it was all me. I was going good at the start, but once the tyre wear set in I had nothing left. I missed out on the experience of a full race in the first one, so anyway, I’ll have to go back and keep working on myself, then hopefully we can get a bit better again for Darwin.”

Triple world champion Troy Bayliss, who is co-owner of DesmoSport Ducati with Ben Henry, noted the challenges of round three, but has already set his sights upon Darwin’s fourth round and further improvement.

“It was looking like Cal was going to have his best weekend yet on the bike,” Bayliss reflected. “He was doing some good laps early on and qualified quite well, but then in the first race we had a strange incident where the exhaust had an issue and he had to pull in – it was just one of those things.

“In the second race I think it was just a lack of confidence after the way the first one went, so yeah, at least he brought it home and it was in one piece. Hopefully the next one in Darwin goes a bit smoother for us, we will try to get him a bit more comfortable before then and see what happens!”

The 2017 Australian Superbike Championship (ASBK) will now take a two-month hiatus before returning on 7-9 July at Hidden Valley Raceway in the Northern Territory.

Like DesmoSport Ducati on Facebook and visit www.asbk.com.au for further information. Cube Performance Centre also has an exclusive DesmoSport Ducati section on its website, available to view at www.cubeperformancecentre.com.au/desmosport-ducati now.