Image: Alex Gobert (Foremost Media).

Yamaha Racing Team enforcer Wayne Maxwell was fortunate to avoid major injury after collecting the outside wall at speed head-first when he exited race two of the YMF Australian Superbike Championship (ASBK) at Sydney Motorsport Park yesterday.

After finishing third in race one and carrying a three-point advantage into the second encounter, 2013 champion Maxwell’s charge came to a crashing halt on lap three just moments after smashing the existing lap record with a 1m29.772s.

The fact that Maxwell’s lap was the quickest ASBK lap recorded in history came as little consolation on Sunday afternoon as he departed the penultimate round 15 points in arrears of defending champion Troy Herfoss in the standings. He was unsure was caused the incident with little notice while running in third at the time, but the championship isn’t completely out of the question.

“The crash was just a bizarre one and it’s just been the story of my season,” Maxwell told CycleOnline.com.au. “I came around and saw the time, a 29.7 on the timer, which around here in a race is an incredible lap. I thought to myself, ‘you just need to settle into a rhythm, you don’t need to try any harder’, but I don’t know whether I just took my mind off it or… I’m not sure.

“I folded to front in turn three and it was really unfortunate. I feel for everybody at Yamaha, that’s three DNFs this year, which is just crazy and we’re still sort of in the championship hunt, but it’s made our life pretty hard now.

“It’s been one of those years, but we’ll go to Phillip Island, try to get pole and win two races. We know we’ve got the speed, but we’re just missing a few things, so hopefully we can test and put it all together. We’ll take it comes and try to get a strong result!”

Maxwell appeared dazed directly following the crash and was later clutching the left side of his body post-race, confirming he was planning to undergo further examination upon return home to determine the extent of any potential damage.

“I had my arms tucked in cos my right shoulder pops out and I ended up copping the wall hard on the left,” he explained. “Hopefully it will maybe even me out and the body will work properly [laughs]. We will go and get it checked out in the next few days and try to bounce back.”