Image: Keith Muir.

Yamaha Racing Team (YRT) with Yamaha Motorcycle Insurance (YMI) made a stunning turnaround at last weekend’s Mallala Swann Insurance Australasian Superbike Championship (ASC) round, indicating it won’t back down amidst a crop of incoming quality teams.

YRT has been the dominant force in the ASC/FX-Superbike series since it switched from the Australian Superbike Championship (ASBK) in 2010, however that reign came to an abrupt halt when the 2014 season got underway at Wakefield Park.

South Australia was much kinder to the factory Yamaha operation last weekend, with Robbie Bugden storming to third overall behind Honda duo Wayne Maxwell and Jamie Stauffer, while rookie teammate Cru Halliday was directly behind in fourth.

The results marked a massive return to form for YRT after current ASBK number three Bugden struggled to 17th at the opening round on debut following a tyre allocation mishap, much to the relief of team principal John Redding.

“We certainly have more competition this year, so to win against a higher grade of competition is always satisfying when that can be achieved,” Redding commented. “It would be nice to have all three riders up there in the top five, but this weekend has been much more enjoyable than Wakefield Park.

“We understand what happened at round one and we don’t want that to happen again, but this goes to show that all of the manufacturers out there are competitive and the set of technical rules we have here are workable for all manufacturers.”

Redding has pinpointed the tight and technical circuits on the calendar as their strong points, positive the team can take advantage of well-refined chassis settings on the underpowered YZF-R1.

“Wakefield should have been a good track for us as well,” he added. “There will be some tracks that we may be affected with high speed, but here, Winton and Wakefield are rider’s tracks. Queensland is more about horsepower and Sydney may be as well, but we will look at that when we get to them.”

Following Mallala Halliday is now top Yamaha at sixth in the standings, Bugden eighth and Rick Olson ninth after finishing in that same position on Sunday.