Image: Keith Muir.

Current Australasian champion Robbie Bugden’s has closed in on the Yamaha Motor Finance Australian Superbike Championship (ASBK) presented by Motul Pirelli points lead despite a more difficult weekend in Darwin.

The Kawasaki BCperformance rider climbed to second in the standings as a number of his title rivals stumbled, going 5-5 at Hidden Valley on Sunday for fifth overall. He’s now 13 points from new leader Troy Herfoss.

“This championship isn’t about winning every race and sometimes you need to do the best you can to be consistently gaining championship points,” Bugden said. “My closest rivals had an average weekend, which helped to push me up the championship leader-board.

“Full credit to the Kawasaki BCperformance as this weekend didn’t come easy at all. From the second we got here we knew we had a lot to do so we tried to push forward, but we didn’t have the pace to win and that wasn’t from a lack of trying. Maybe this wasn’t our weekend, but we did the best we could. Championships are about consistency and that’s what we are doing so hopefully we can go to Morgan Park – which is my home round – and I’ll be able to do a lot better.”

Bugden’s rookie teammate Kyle Buckley was involved in the multi-rider incident that caused the red flag stoppage in race one, ruled out of the remainder of the weekend with a badly broken ankle. He’s targeting a return in Queensland next month.