Image: Foremost Media.

Three-time ASBK champion Glenn Allerton has recounted a challenging weekend at Phillip Island for the sixth round of 2025, with a back injury sustained on Friday seeing him withdraw from Saturday altogether, before racing to salvage P6 overall from the rear of the grid.

An incident in the team transporter resulted in the 44-year-old tweaking his back, with the symptoms intensifying on Saturday and ultimately keeping him from setting a qualifying time across the unique two-day format.

Despite this, he posted a convincing third-place finish in race one after a head-turning climb through the pack, before recording a 10th-place score in the second encounter after enduring a rear tyre puncture, which was enough to still earn him sixth overall.

The result and the 29 points gained see him maintain fourth position in the point-standings with two rounds remaining in the Mi-Bike Australian Superbike Championship (ASBK) for this year.

“Yeah, I mean, I’ve injured my back, obviously,” Allerton told CycleOnline. “Not many people know what happened, but we have a spare engine in the back of the truck and it’s on a dolly, and as I was wheeling it into position, I was sort of distracted, and when I looked back, I could see it falling, so my reaction was to catch it.

“Saturday morning, I woke up and it took me ages to get ready, and then I was trying to reach over just to grab my clothes out of a bag and my back… it was like getting electrocuted, so just getting to the track was painful.

“We were planning not to race – the plan with the team was that I was going to do the warm-up, and if I couldn’t ride, then we would pack up and go home. I’m uncomfortable no matter what I do, except for when I sit on the motorbike. It seems that if I have my foot up, bent, all the strain comes out of my back, and I’m okay. So when I jumped on the bike, I actually felt alright.”

Though stiffness and pain were present throughout each race, the 2008, 2011 and 2014 title-winner Allerton persisted with two solid results at round six, noting that when the chips are down, it is usually when he and the Superbike Advocates team have been doing their best work in 2025.

“I was so happy to get on the podium in race one,” Allerton continued. “You know, it seems like this team, the harder it seems to be for us, the better we do, so when we’re up against the odds, we do really well. At eight o’clock this morning, the plan was that we were going to pack up and go home early, so instead to come away with a podium today is bloody awesome.”