Image: Keith Muir.

Factory Yamaha rider Rick Olson has conceded that top five finishes in the 2014 Swann Insurance Australasian Superbike Championship will be difficult to attain this season after the YRT with YMI team was shaded at Wakefield Park’s opening round.

Olson was the top finisher of four official R1s, claiming 7-6-8 results in Sunday’s three Superbike races for seventh overall.

It was an improvement over Saturday’s results haul, however higher finishes will be hard-fought in coming rounds according to the current ASC Supersport champion.

It was a difficult weekend for Yamaha, which eventually saw Olson the team’s top-scorer while Superbike rookie Cru Halliday was ninth, multiple-time champion Kevin Curtain 12th and incoming ASBK number three Robbie Bugden a disastrous 17th.

While he refuses to completely rule out potential victories and podiums, Olson’s priority rests on finishing first Yamaha in 2014.

“To be honest, I think where we finished is where we’re going to finish all year unless we can find something pretty major,” Olson told CycleOnline. “It’s hard because obviously we’ve got the least powerful bike out there and to overtake you need to get off the turns.

“We’re down on power, which hurts us coming off the corner as well. But I’m still going to try my best, I want to win and get the Yamaha up there. It’s not impossible, it’s just going to be tough.

“For me it’s important to be the first Yamaha home and if I can challenge at the front then I will always try. It’s definitely going to be a struggle.”

Yamaha’s woes were impacted by confusion with their allocated Dunlop tyres prior to Sunday’s race day, which saw all four riders unknowingly aboard an old specification 2012 model rear tyre less superior to the current control rubber.

“In 2012 they redesigned the tyre and the only way to pick the difference was by the part number,” explained Dunlop Motorsport representative Ken Wieden. “Nobody expected there to be any in Australia, but there were some and somehow Yamaha got them – how many, we don’t know.

“They got tyres from three different production batches and two of them were the new spec, one was the old spec. Unfortunately there’s a huge difference in performance between the two tyres. The compound’s the same, but the construction is completely different. That’s what provides the current control tyre consistency and durability.”

It was only discovered on Saturday evening that Yamaha had the older tyres fitted during the pre-season test, as well as Friday and Saturday’s FX-Superbike proceedings in which Halliday was ninth, Bugden 10th, Olson 19th and Curtain 22nd after an incident-filled start to the weekend.