Image: Russell Colvin.

A ‘racing incident’ this morning saw Cru Halliday run off the track at high speed through turn three before having to bail, but the Yamaha Racing Team rider has confirmed he will continue tomorrow in the Mi-Bike Australian Superbike Championship (ASBK) after avoiding major injury in the fall at Phillip Island.

Qualifying second with a 1m31.337s this morning, Halliday was recovering ground following the start of race one and was in hot pursuit of teammate Mike Jones and Arthur Sissis [Unitech Racing] on the second lap when a concertina effect of riders drifting wide at turn three saw him run off the track at the fast Stoner Corner.

Remarkably, Halliday was able to keep the bike upright for the most part through the gravel trap but was forced to jump off as the wall quickly approached. While the incident forced the number 65 to retire from the race, Halliday has confirmed that he suffered no major damage in the fall and will line-up again tomorrow for races two and three.

“It was a bit of a strange situation because I got a really good run out of turn two onto Mike [Jones], I just passed Glenn Allerton into turn one, ” Halliday stated to CycleOnline. “I saw Josh Waters getting a bit further away, so I thought to myself if I follow Mike into turn two, I could probably get him up the inside into turn four.

“So I went in there quite fast, but at the same time as I said, me going in there quick I didn’t see Arthur, something must have happened to him, and as Arthur has sort of had that problem he went to the right so it sort of pushed Mike to the right, and I was probably heading in there about 10kph quicker than them.

“It was just a concertina effect really, everyone just got shuffled right and I got shuffled off the track – I literally had nowhere to go. I almost crashed, literally, as I went off the track but I held onto it. It happened that fast, I don’t think that we got around turn three, it happened going into turn three.

“The angle that I came off the track, I was still pointing looking at the wall, I tried to brake as slowly and as easily as I could without digging the front in. I got to about 10m out and I knew I wasn’t going to slow down, so I had to bail and I saw the bike hit the tyre wall and go quite high and I knew it was going down at the angle I was coming in at.

“[The bike] did get me, but that part didn’t really hurt me, it caught the back of my leg and caught me sort of in my lower back – got me in the spine so if I wasn’t wearing a back protector it could have been a different story. I put a hole in the front of my boot and sort of smashed the front of my left foot, but it’s alright and I can still race tomorrow, so for me, it was just a racing incident.”

Despite the zero points haul from race one, Halliday has shown strong pace through the pre-season and will have the opportunity for redemption tomorrow at the Phillip Island Circuit.