A selection of riders detail their day at Hidden Valley’s fourth round of the 2017 Yamaha Motor Finance Australian Superbike Championship (ASBK) presented by Motul Pirelli. Team and privateer competitors can submit comments to [email protected] prior to the Tuesday after events for inclusion in the post-event Quotebook feature.

Superbike

Image: Keith Muir.

Callum Spriggs (DesmoSport Ducati) – 15th overall:
I was definitely feeling sore today and I got a 14th in race one. In race two I was off to a good start and staying with a group of guys for a while there, but then I had a little problem and I had to finish the race early. I’ll just try to do heaps of fitness training because Morgan Park will be a physical track like this one. So I’ll keep working on my fitness, get the shoulder working well, get the bike working good again and we’ll see what happens.”

Robbie Bugden (Kawasaki BCperformance) – Fifth overall:
This championship isn’t about winning every race and sometimes you need to do the best you can to be consistently gaining championship points. My closest rivals had an average weekend which helped to push me up the championship leader board. Full credit to the Kawasaki BCperformance Racing Team 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 Raceway in QLD, which is my home round and I’ll be able to do a lot better.

Kyle Buckley (Kawasaki BCperformance) – DNF:
We were having a positive weekend up until the crash. We ended up finding a good rhythm for the race within the first seven laps and I was in P9 with an idea of catching another few riders in the race but that’s when it went wrong. Up until then we made some steps in the right direction and got the bike going well. I’d like to think we would have been able to finish with the top guys for both races but hopefully we can pick up where we left off. I will be out of action but I will try to heal up and become fit again as quickly as I can.

Matt Walters (Swann Insurance Kawasaki) – Sixth overall:
We struggled a fair bit with qualifying and we couldn’t get the outright one-lap pace. But the boys got it together and we were more consistent through the races which helped us. We ended up with two eighths, which put us in sixth overall and that’s the best result I’ve had this year. Now we can only build on that and keep pushing forward. I’d like to thank Brad Swallow and Glenn Willing as last week we had a fair bit of stuff going on and I rang them with probably two or three days left before we had to leave and they dropped everything. They came and gave us a hand and we’ve had a good weekend, so without those two people I wouldn’t have been able to make it here or do this. I haven’t been to Morgan Park so I’ll have to do some laps I reckon, but we’ll endeavour to try and practice on some smaller tracks and go to Morgan Park and see how we go. We’ll keep pushing on and we’ll just see where we end up.

Supersport

Image: Keith Muir.

Tom Toparis (Cube Racing) – Second overall:
We got second overall and I didn’t gain any points on Ted [Collins], which is a bit disappointing, but we didn’t lose any either. It’s not bad result and I’m back on the podium so I can’t be too disappointed with that. Winning races as we did in the first race is always the goal and I learnt a lot this weekend. Next up we’ve got Morgan Park, so we we’ll get there and test and try to be strong for the races there as well!