Reigning Australasian champion Robbie Bugden’s exit from race two at Morgan Park’s fifth round of the 2017 Yamaha Motor Finance Australian Superbike Championship (ASBK) presented by Motul Pirelli will prompt him to up his intensity in the closing rounds.

Bugden moved to within a single point of the series lead following race one in Queensland, however a crash while running sixth mid-race later that afternoon now sees him 21 markers down with the championship on the line.

With significant experience to his credit around Sydney on the Kawasaki BCperformance ZX-10R entry en route to last year’s Swann Series crown, Bugden expects a major turnaround in Sydney’s penultimate round where he’s targeting a breakthrough round victory.

“Look, we’ve obviously debriefed on it a number of times and as Queensland worked out on the whole, we lost eight points in the championship from when we arrived,” Bugden told CycleOnline.com.au. “So that’s not disastrous, but obviously it certainly wasn’t ideal and we did give a handful of points back. To only lose eight points is okay and we’re still right in this championship.

“We need to get a big result here in Sydney and that’s what we’ll work towards. I think these last two tracks will suit our bike a lot and we’ve done plenty of laps here. The ZX-10R really suits the open tracks, so we want to come down here in two weeks and try to win a couple of races.

“We’ve put ourselves in the hunt pretty every round, but this is a track we know really well and we’re looking for that big result. There are a whole bunch of people now that are potentially in it for the championship, so whoever wants to stake their claim for this championship needs to here in Sydney – us included – and that’s where our goal is.”

With championship front-runners Troy Herfoss, Daniel Falzon and Bugden all crashing out of a race in Queensland on Sunday, the points table has been turned upside down as Morgan Park winner Wayne Maxwell now leads the charge by five points from Herfoss, while Bugden’s third in the standings.