Image: Foremost Media.

An ongoing throttle issue resulted in Matt Walters’ absence from the Mi-Bike Australian Superbike Championship (ASBK) grid on Sunday at Phillip Island, the problem plaguing the Aprilia rider for much of the round six weekend.

Walters’ mid-season break was more extended than much of the fields after he made the decision to miss the Morgan Park round, with anticipation surrounding he how would continue to progress onboard the RSV4 1100 upon his return.

Unfortunately, that progression was halted by an issue with the electronic throttle, causing the bike to return to idle sporadically. In the interest of the safety of himself and his fellow competitors, Walters made the decision to withdraw from Sunday’s racing with the issue still present.

“The only problem was that the bike had an intermittent problem with the electronic throttle,” Walters explained to CycleOnline. “So it was pretty dangerous to be honest. There were a couple of times in practice and qualifying that it just returned back to idle at random. It wasn’t ideal for us. I don’t think it’s really a problem with the Motec, I think it is just a tuning problem.

“I’m pretty sure it’s just it being so new to us. We had one track day before we went there. We knew we were up against it, but we didn’t think we were going to run into that sort of problem. It is what it is, we are just trying to get the bike ready for 2024, and that was part of the exercise, going down there and seeing where we end up, see what we run into, but we didn’t think it would be that much of a drama with it, that was all.”

After an extended tenure onboard Kawasaki machinery, long-time national Superbike contender Walters made the switch to Aprilia this year, making great progress across the opening rounds on a relatively stock machine, with stock electronics.

Once the issue is ironed out, Walters maintains that RSV4 1100 has immense potential and feels that the addition of the Motec electronics will allow for a step forward.

“There’s definitely a lot of potential in it, and there were a couple of laps there where the bike didn’t play up,” Walters added. “It was completely different to what was I used to, it was really, open really free and I thought I was going to be on to do a really, really good job here on the weekend.

“The problem just seemed to plague us from the minute we got there, and we didn’t want to get amongst a bunch of guys and have a bike stall and hurt me or someone else, so that was kind of the reason that we pulled out of Sunday.

“I think the potential of the bike is well beyond my expectations, it’s going to be a really cool thing when it is set-up, but it is just going to take time. We really have to try and get down to do some more testing between the rounds, just to help us get a base setting with it and go from there.”