IPONE Yamaha-mounted privateer Michael Blair is one of the most highly regarded rising talents in the country, competing within both the Australasian Superbike Championship and the high profile Asia Road Racing Championship in 2016. CycleOnline.com.au contacted Central Coast resident Blair this week for his take on the current season.

Image: Keith Muir.

Racing in the Asia Road Racing Championship…

Yeah, it’s awesome! There’s a lot of great riders, most in the field have had world championship experience, and it’s probably the only championship besides MotoGP with all four factory Japanese teams, so it’s pretty awesome racing against all of them. It’s a really high level of racing and a lot of learning for me.

Competing internationally within Asia…

It’s so different. Especially the heat and food is a lot different, but I like the food, so that’s the easy bit. Also learning new tracks, kind of pretty quickly because we don’t have a lot of time to practice – we get three 40-minute sessions, so you have to learn a lot fast. Plus they’re a lot longer races over there, usually half an hour to 40 minutes long, where we are used to having about 10-minute races in Australia.

Logistics of the ARRC…

We were lucky enough the first year to ride for Petronas and that kind of opened the doors for us to get in contact with the promoters and then we’ve had a few good sponsors on board the last few years that could help us out with getting bikes and things set up, just getting the fright boxes flown over there for the championship. Once it’s there for the start of year, it all just gets shipped in the one crate, so it works well for us from Australia.

Image: Russell Colvin.

Riding the R1 this year in Australia…

It’s awesome! It’s definitely another new challenge, I have taken a liking to the 1000 and I have a lot of fun riding it, so its another learning curve for me. It’s been a good progression so far, but there’s definitely still a long way to go.

Switching between the Superbike at home and the R6 in Asia…

Yeah, it’s pretty different. The 600 doesn’t have as much power as the Superbike, so I just need to learn to use a lot more corner speed on that. And then coming back on the Superbike, you kind of lose bit of corner speed and pick it up on the entry and exits of corners. So they require two different styles, but not too different.