BCperformance press release:

The final day of racing at the Mallala round of the Swann Insurance Australiasian Superbike Championship brought some brilliant results for the SA Kawasaki BCperformance team, with special mention to Paul Young for his sensational results. The sun was blazing, keeping everything nice and warm on track, giving rider’s wonderful grip once the tarmac warmed up. Some changes had been made to the operating procedures of the team prior to the race meeting at Mallala and courtesy of those changes, the team worked in perfect unison, making the entire operation significantly more efficient for all involved.

SA Kawasaki BCperformance superbike riders Ben Burke and Evan Byles had a great day out on track, with both putting in very solid performances all day long. Ben set a great time in race one, tussling with Cru Halliday and Matt Walters, eventually getting the better of both riders to come home in 6th. Race two had Ben caught in a three way battle for fifth but was unfortunately bested by both Cru Halliday and Sean Condon, coming home in 7th.

Unfortunately Ben lost the front end at turn three during race three after what Ben described as a ‘Love touch’ by one of his fellow competitors, bringing his weekend to an unfortunate close. However, Ben said, “I was very pleased with my weekend’s racing. We were able to bridge the gap to the leading group and the developments the team made between rounds one and two have made the whole package much better.

I’m now looking forward to round three with some more developments coming to help run with the leaders more consistently. I’d like to thank my sponsors for all of their support.” Evan had a similarly progressive weekend, working in well in race one and better his times again in race two.

Race three saw Evan achieve his best result all weekend, scoring himself 10th place. Evan mentioned that, “I had a very enjoyable weekend at Mallala with lots of familiar faces and friends from years ago coming past the SA Kawasaki BCperformance garages to say hello. Kelvin and Kirsty worked together to improve the set-up of my Ninja ZX-10R throughout the weekend to improve my performance to a new personal best of 1:10.

The team is settling into the new season well now with all our team members working well together to achieve the best results. A big thanks to the huge crowd and Terry and Gloria for the great event”. The Supersport class brought some mixed results, with Kyle Buckley finishing strongly in race one to place 5th but unfortunately had a collision with another rider in race two, ending his race.

Kyle was ok but the bike suffered relatively significant damage. However, the team mechanics worked quickly to rebuild the bike for the next race. Kyle managed to compete in race three and finished strongly in 9th, despite riding a bike with unmodified road suspension. Kyle summed things up with “I had an up and down day today, I was able to run a good first race and hang onto the lead group, finishing in 5th place. A front-end loss in race two left me with a DNF and a like that was only just able to be repaired for race three.

Phenomenal job by the team to get the bike going for the last race, allowing me to regain some points in the championship and I’m looking forward to round three!” Paul Young felt much better today despite his crash yesterday, managing to compete in the leading pack in all three races, finishing 7th, 4th and 6th. He regularly battled with Rick Olsen, Mitch Levy and Troy Guenther, with all four riders providing some very entertaining racing.

The three Ninja 300 Cup races provided the most entertaining racing of the day with Paul Young managing to score a clean sweep of wins. Two of the three races were red flagged, and as such restarted to form two-part races. Unfortunately, Di Jones was unable to race today but we look forward to her re-joining the team at the next round. Paul absolutely dominated the day, winning by 1.5sec in race one, 9.7sec in race two and 7sec in race three. Luke Burgess, Jack Dawes and Ben White were constantly nipping at Paul’s heels but his skill and experience enabled him to put plenty of distance between himself and his competitors.

Paul put forward his thoughts on the weekend – “It was by no means an easy weekend and I doubted the wisdom of contesting two classes at times. But getting three wins on the 300 and some solid points on the 600 was a great result to come away with after almost getting wiped out of the event altogether on Saturday. I must admit I struggled for strength on the ZX-6R with Saturday’s injuries but the 300 Ninja was no problem.

The real highlight of the weekend though was that the whole team seemed to really hit a high in terms of working as a well-gelled unit at Mallala, and that’s just as pleasing as the good results.” Special mention must go to the circumstances under which Paul achieved these wins – he had been working in Germany prior to the event and only landed in Adelaide at 10pm on Friday night.

His subsequent crash on Saturday earned him torn leathers, a large gash in his arm, a pile of stitches and more bruises than a week-old piece of fruit. Not only did Paul get back up and brush himself off, ready to race again, he did it with absolute courage and dignity, despite being horribly jet lagged. And after all that, he accepted his wins with absolute graciousness and congratulated his competitors on their own achievements.

Paul absolutely deserves to be recognised for his efforts this weekend and we as a team, pay tribute to him and his efforts. The team has now packed up and is on the long road back to Sydney where we will regroup and prepare the bikes for the next round at Sydney Motorsport Park in six weeks’ time. We’re all very much looking forward to the next round of racing but in the meantime, we’ll also be doing lots of testing and further preparation to ensure all the riders and bikes are in the best shape possible to compete for wins in their respective classes.