Image: Foremost Media.

An unforced error during the first Mi-Bike Australian Superbike Championship race of the 2022 season has been recalled by defending champion Wayne Maxwell, the damaging incident destroying his primary V4R.

Boost Mobile Ducati-mounted Maxwell led each session by a comfortable margin throughout the weekend in the build-up to race one, a clear favourite for the overall after storming to pole position with a record-breaking lap.

The current ASBK champion launched to the holeshot in the opening 12-lap encounter, however, his charge came to a crushing halt when Maxwell fell at the high-speed Hayshed on lap four.

“It was so random… I didn’t feel like I did anything different and then I was on the ground,” Maxwell told CycleOnline. “It was weird, I was struggling to stop at Honda [turn four] and stuff in the race, which I hadn’t been all weekend.

“[It was] something random that just happened. I’m very sorry to the team and all of our partners, it’s not really a great way to start our campaign after a weekend that we should have been dominant.”

Still, Maxwell managed to bounce back to win race two despite injuring his hand and ankle in the incident, admitting that he had lacked comfort on the back-up bike prior to going out and marching to victory, salvaging seventh overall in the process.

“It was good to fight back in race two, I didn’t really feel good on the bike in race two, but it was good to get away with the win and we will come out at the next one and try to redeem ourselves again,” he added.

While many of Maxwell’s nearest rivals are factory riders or have a degree of official support, he and the McMartin Racing team are effectively a privateer operation. With his main bike scraped out of the gravel in multiple bits, it will be a costly Sunday for the effort.

“For us, it’s a massive dent in our budget obviously, but it is what it is, and thankfully over the time I haven’t done a whole lot of damage over the years,” Maxwell said. “We are pretty confident we’ll bounce back from it, Craig [McMartin] will polish it up and bring me back a mint bike like he always does.”