2012 Australian Superbike Champion Josh Waters snared a prize seat in the ultra-competitive British Superbike Championship (BSB) for the 2013 season. Though showing plenty of promise, he’d faced a series of setbacks in the initial rounds, struggling to show the potential that his followers know he possesses.

Round five at Snetterton marked a turning point for the Aussie who took a chance on a late setup change during pre-event testing and found the feeling he’d been missing aboard the Milwaukee Yamaha R1.

We checked in with Josh to find out more about the start to his season and recap the weekend’s races at Snetterton.

Josh Waters showed strong form at the fifth round at Snetterton. Image: Milwaukee Yamaha/Impact Images.

We’ve been following your progress closely here at CycleOnline and we can feel you’ve been quite disappointed with the start to the season. Can you bring us up to speed with the first four rounds so far and that turning point in testing at Snetterton?

It all started at the beginning of the year. The weather wasn’t that great so testing wasn’t all that good because of that. Everyone was in the same boat. Round one was okay, I managed to finish both races. Round two, I thought I was going to go alright, but unfortunately I had a big crash which I’m still hurting from. Before round three I had another crash and from there just spiralled. Knockhill wasn’t good for me either.

The team have done things to try to help me out and I’ve also reset myself to get things back happening how I want. In the last 20 minutes of the test at Snetterton we made some changes that were surprising. I got a feel back and it gave us something to work on and we went from there. I was able to improve those times further at the race meetings.

You spent a lot of your time racing Suzuki in Australia, and raced the GSX-R in both WEC and WSBK trim, too. How different has it been switching to the Yamaha R1 in the BSB’s specs?

The bike’s really good, you just have to look at the past results and the championships it has won here in the BSB. But for sure, it is different to ride than the bikes I previously ridden. I hope that I’ve got my head around it. There’s a lot of different things to come to terms with, it is very different to anything we ride at home.

Waters admits the R1 is a different beast to anything he’s ridden but is confident he is finding his footing. Image: Milwaukee Yamaha/Impact Images.

Let’s focus on the first race at Snetterton, a super positive weekend for you. Can you talk us through the race as we understand there was a fair bit of action on track?

At the start I fell back a bit but came back through. Once I got on my own I dropped about a second in lap times which was good. The times weren’t good enough to battle for a win or anything but they were a lot better than they had been. I ended up getting into the battle for sixth but unfortunately on the second to last lap one of the riders crashed going into a chicane and I almost cleaned him up on the way out. I had to run off and I dropped back to ninth because of that. But it was still good to finish inside the top 10.

The result must have been a confidence booster for the second race. How did it pan out for you?

Again on the first lap I had another two riders crash in front of me and I almost had to stop. Other riders went past then so I lost a few spots. They pulled the safety car out again there and I was able to work my way back through then and get to seventh. It was another solid result and like I said, a lot better than the previous round.

The Milwaukee Yamaha team is one of the series’ standouts and certainly one of the most professional. Image: Milwaukee Yamaha/Impact Images.

How important is it for you to come through the weekend with these results and make constant forward progress from the test through to the races?

At this stage it’s really, really important. I had been feeling pretty down in the dumps. The team have done a great job and I’ve kind of re-started from here and hopefully it’s something I can can keep building on. I don’t expect to go out and smash them but I’d obviously like to be further up. I’ll keep trying hard and see how I go in my first year.

You head back to Brands Hatch for the next round, this time on the GP circuit. Are you hopeful of keeping this run going there?

I haven’t done the full circuit but I’ve done half of it! I hope now that I’ve got a better feeling for the bike I can pick the circuit up a bit quicker. We’ll see. I’m looking forward to it.

Thanks for the chat Josh!

No problem, I check out the site every day and it’s good to have our news and results out there.