Australian Superbike racing will resume this weekend at Queensland Raceway, the second point-scoring round of the 2013 season. After a series of tests at the venue in recent weeks, Sunday will be a pivotal point of the season already.

Teams need to put a stop to the early season dominance of Next Gen Motorsports BMW’s Glenn Allerton if they’re to stand any chance of this title barring disaster. Allerton was quickest during both recent tests in QLD, so he’s no doubt the man to beat.

During last week’s test Suzuki was able to narrow the gap to four tenths of a second over the course of a lap according to times released by teams, however Allerton is certain his pace over race distance is far stronger than anybody else.

We’re still waiting on news regarding Jamie Stauffer, whose weekend – and title prospects – is in jeopardy after he went down heavily last Friday. Sustaining hip injuries in the incident, Honda is yet to confirm whether or not he’ll be on track come Friday.

Will we see Team Honda Racing’s Jamie Stauffer on track at Queensland Raceway? Image: Andrew Gosling/TBG Sport.

It’ll be awesome to see the battles that take place this weekend and we do always see plenty at the Paperclip, which leads to tight racing as the hard-braking nature of the circuit enable riders to give chase in a battle of the bravest.

There are 18 Superbikes, 16 Prostock bikes and 23 Supersport entries as of now. Between those three ‘premier’ categories, it’s a reasonably healthy line-up and will add to the weekend’s excitement. It’s also positive the see the 250 Production category gain some steam with 12 – not a lot, but it’s a start.

CycleOnline.com.au will be at the event all weekend with a selection of quality content and we’re primed after what has been a long layoff since Symmons Plains in April.

There’s actually a lot of excitement taking place at the moment within road racing locally as we get set of the ASBK’s official return to Eastern Creek (now Sydney Motorsport Park) next Thursday, 20 June. It’ll just be a test for now, but the interest will be huge.

Seven-time American champion Mat Mladin will be on track aboard Allerton’s HP4 in an official test role, potentially returning later in the year for the FX-500. But you never know, we could see Mladin on track more than initially expected if he is competitive and, more importantly, enjoys it.

Last week we had an interesting ‘war of words’ of sorts between Team Suzuki’s Phil Tainton and Yamaha Racing Team’s John Redding. Tainton explained his reasons for favouring the current rules of the ASBK (and remember he’s the chairman of the MA Road Race Commission so effectively decides the rules), which are more highly modified than Superstock-spec and that of FX-Superbikes.

Prostock will be run separately to Superbike this weekend. Image: Murray Sayle.

Redding responded in a variety of places the following day on internet message boards and Facebook, plus we posted a story up outlining his stance on the subject. Both have credible reasons for their opinions and experience to match, but it was a real sign of the battles continually taking place behind the scenes in Aussie road racing.

Who’s right and who’s wrong? Fortunately that’s not our decision to make, but realistically it’d be ideal to have all parties on the same page so the sport can somehow prosper in the years to come.

And just as we suggested last week, Dorna has confirmed it is indeed scaling back the World Superbike rules in an effort to cap costs over the next three years. What specification and just how much they’ll be scaled back is yet to be revealed, however MA needs to keep a close eye on these revisions as I’m sure they are.

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