Image: Foremost Media.

A crash in race two brought a premature end to Mark Chiodo’s opening round of the 2023 Mi-Bike Australian Superbike Championship (ASBK), the British Superbike Championship (BSB) bound rider later indicating that he didn’t have enough available spares on hand to repair the damage at Phillip Island.

Chiodo previously outlined his motives to switch back to Honda machinery for this season, piloting an R1 in a privateer ASBK effort last season, where he also debuted in the British National Superstock Championship on an R1.

It is understood the Victorian-based rider only had one race-ready Fireblade this weekend – a machine that was used last year by Herfoss and Penrite Honda Racing, only taking delivery of a brand-new second bike Monday of race week.

A crash at turn two in the early stages of the second race damaged his race-ready Fireblade, notably the exhaust, subframe, fairings and potentially the forks needing repair. Prior to the incident, Chiodo delivered a strong rain-affected opening race to commence the season with a P5 finish.

“Seeing it’s the first round on a new bike, we just don’t have any spares,” Chiodo explained to CycleOnline. “We got a brand new bike Monday, but we have got nothing to put on it. We have no exhaust, fairings – I had a set of fairings that I borrowed off Senna [Agius], but we haven’t pulled the bike apart before, we haven’t done anything on it and we have no exhaust anyway, so either way, we couldn’t race.

“The biggest thing for this round and next round we were just thinking we want to get the bike going, get testing and start to enjoy it, then go for results after that.”

On top of his local efforts for 2023, Chiodo will return to the BSB championship, Honda-equipped, and plans to do the second half of the season at this stage in the National Superstock category.

The second round of the 2023 Mi-Bike Australian Superbike Championship (ASBK) takes place at Sydney Motorsport Park (SMSP) on 24-25 March, while the second half of the BSB season commences at Brands Hatch between 21-23 July.