Cube Racing press release:

Cube Racing duo Tom Toparis and Oli Bayliss have captured second overall in their respective categories at Wakefield Park’s second round of the 2018 Australian Superbike Championship (ASBK), remaining atop the championship standings.

Goulburn’s own Toparis leads the Supersport points by four markers after finishing second at his home round, the 17-year-old qualifying third on the grid with a 59.918s despite a crash in qualifying one and then going on to record 2-2 results today.

“It was a good weekend for me and I’m still leading the championship, which is a plus,” explained Toparis, who led the opening five laps of race two much to the delight of his local fans. “I was a lot faster in testing, but I struggled after my crash on Saturday, so we will look to build the confidence back up now.

“Cru [Halliday] was really strong today, but it’s good that it’s close and I’m happy not to make any mistakes in the races after what happened yesterday. 40 points in the bag at my home round was good and, although I’m a bit disappointed, it wasn’t to be this weekend and we will move on to South Australia and see what we can do.”

As for Bayliss, he qualified sixth in Supersport 300 and then moved forward to fourth in race one on Saturday afternoon. Sunday saw him charge ahead to claim stellar 3-2 results, missing out on the final race win by just 0.003s after a photo-finish. Second overall now has the 14-year-old eight points ahead in the title-race.

“It was a tough weekend in some ways, but I feel like we came good in the races and got the job done to get as many points as we could,” Bayliss said. “That final race was so close, everyone was riding so fast and it feels good to be in the championship lead still ahead of round three. In some ways it still does feel like a win!”

Team owner Ben Henry was once again proud of the youthful pair’s efforts, particularly happy for them to bring home a string of well-deserved results in what were hot, windy conditions experienced across the race weekend.

“Both of the Cube Racing boys were once again really good this weekend and we’re happy with their results,” recalled Henry. “Tom’s still leading the Supersport championship and that’s really positive for the team. We know what we need to work on, but he’s a really good starter and racer as well. It will be an interesting series to follow from here.

“Young Oli has such a fighting spirit and it’s good to see, because he just turns up and puts in 100 percent. He rides the bike and has what it takes to be up at the front, so they were some great races and second overall was a really good result.”

The Cube Racing team will now turn its attention to The Bend Motorsports Park round to be staged in South Australia between 19-22 April, marking round three of the scheduled seven this season.

Like Cube Racing on Facebook and visit www.asbk.com.au for further information. Cube Performance Centre also has an exclusive Cube Racing section on its website, available to view at www.cubeperformancecentre.com.au/cuberacing now.