Cube Racing press release:

The Cube Racing team was right in the mix at Morgan Park’s fifth round of the 2017 Australian Superbike Championship, where the youthful squad hit the track in both the Supersport and Supersport 300 categories.

After setting a 1m16.016s for fourth place in Supersport qualifying, Tom Toparis made strong progress in race one on Sunday where he finished in the runner-up position for a significant haul of points.

After showing promising speed in race one, it was a disappointing end to the round for Toparis as he was unable to capitalise on his opening race performance due to a clutch problem that saw him drop out of the running order whilst holding a top five position early on in race two.

“It was definitely good to get on the podium again this morning with second in race one,” said Toparis. “In the second race we changed a few things and I think we were ready to challenge for a win, but after we got in front of Ted we did a clutch and that ruined my race.”

Leaving the event in 12th place overall and now sitting third in the point-standings, it will be all about capturing race wins for the remainder of the 2017 schedule according to the New South Wales-based teenager.

“It’s a disappointing end to the weekend and it puts a massive hole in my championship,” Toparis added. “Anyway, it’s about winning races from here on and that’s all we can really do. A huge thanks to the team as always and now we look forward to Sydney in a couple of weeks.”

Supersport 300 class contender Oli Bayliss made strides in the right direction throughout the weekend taking multiple positives from his home event in Queensland. Despite a crash in race two, he still salvaged fifth overall in the Up To 300 ranks for the round.

Qualifying on pole with a fast lap on 1m23.940s, Bayliss went on to finish second in class for race one and redeem himself in race three with a victory after logging the unfortunate DNF result in race two.

“The first race was pretty good, I finished third overall and second in my class, which I’m really happy about,” Bayliss commented. “I definitely need the points and race two didn’t really help as I had a bit of a bingle, but race three was really good and I took the win.”

Bayliss leaves the fifth round of the championship holding the fourth spot on the overall rankings, 96 points behind series leader Reid Battye.

Following a mixed weekend on-track, team owner/manager Ben Henry believes both Toparis and Bayliss’ time will come as the young racers continue to develop their skills and race-craft under the Cube Racing program.

“It was a little bit mixed, they both had good pace but they couldn’t really convert it into race results,” Henry explained. “Tom had a small technical issue and Oli had a crash, but it’s just the way it goes sometimes.

“Both of the kids are really fast, but they’re both pretty much the youngest in their classes, their time will come and it will all pan out. The results aside from that though were really encouraging and it was great to see the Cube bikes up at the front yet again.”

Cube Racing-supported Supersport racer Aidan Hayes finished out the Morgan Park event in 11th overall in his second outing alongside the team.

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