Victory in the final round of ASBK 2025 at The Bend Motorsport Park capped off a convincing finish to the season for Yamaha Racing Team’s Mike Jones, who made it back-to-back round wins to close out the year. In this Conversation feature, CycleOnline spoke with the Superbike number two post-race to hear his thoughts on the weekend and extending with YRT for the next two years.

Image: Foremost Media.

Mike, overall win here at The Bend to finish the season, congratulations! That’s two in a row now for you – a good way to finish the championship.

Absolutely, yeah. No better feeling than getting a round win and, you know, to do it two rounds in a row is pretty awesome. It’s just a great reward for the team for all their hard work throughout the year. You know, the Yamaha Racing Team have put in a big effort every weekend. I think we work really well together. I’d also like to say a special thanks to Kev Marshall, he’s the brains of the team here. Also my guys, you know, Dylan as my crew chief, he’s unreal – he gives me everything I need. Liam too, my mechanic, those guys just work 100 percent. So to be able to reward them with a race win here at The Bend is really nice. And obviously, from my side, you know, you put in the effort, do all the training, you turn up and… it’s hard competition, so when you get a win, it’s a great feeling. So yeah, stoked.

From what I’m hearing too, you will continue as well for next year and maybe beyond. Is there anything you can talk about with that?

Yeah, I’ve just signed the deal with Yamaha again for 2026 and also the 2027 summer series that’s up and coming, so I’m excited to continue with the team again, this has been my fourth season with the team – I’ll go into my fifth and sixth seasons with YRT. Again, like I said, I’m just very at home here on this team. I feel like I’ve just gelled well with the guys here. It’s not easy… it’s challenging, we know that, we can see that on the track, but that’s part of why I like it actually. If racing was easy, you wouldn’t bother doing it. So it’s a big challenge and we’re always trying to find ways to improve and develop, and it’s something that we’re going to have to look forward to for the coming seasons. Obviously, you know, having Josh [Waters] and his team dominate these last two seasons, we’re going to have to reinvigorate ourselves and see what we can come up with for the next season.

Image: Foremost Media.

Do you think this next contract you just signed sees you out? Can you see yourself going past 2027?

Yeah, absolutely. It’s not something that I think I’ve just signed up to the 2027 season and that’ll be it. It’s just a matter of, in racing generally, you’re on a one-year deal, but with the nature of the change in the ASBK championship calendar going from a traditional, you know, normal year-to-year sort of calendar, now we’re going to have a summer series going, so it’s just a matter of trying to get on top of that and get that done. And, you know, as a rider, it’s nice to have a little bit of security there. The cost of living’s going up, it isn’t getting cheaper, so in such a hostile and challenging environment, in terms of a job, to be able to sign a deal where I’m solid for another two years essentially, is really awesome.

What are your thoughts on the summer series and the way it’s sort of shaping up next year?

Yeah, look, I’m a bit impartial on it really. Like, racing’s racing. Whenever it’s on, I’m turning up and going racing, and I do my job no matter what. But I see that the benefit of it is that it’ll just condense things down a little bit, which in my opinion, it’s better to have more races in a shorter amount of time. You can’t beat going racing. That’s what we’re here to do, right? You can go and do all the testing and all the practice in the world, but that’s not at the same intensity as what you do when you go racing. So I think that if we can get more races in a shorter amount of time, that’s definitely better. Looking into the summer series as such, yeah, it’s gonna be hot. I know we complain when it’s cold and all that sort of stuff over the normal calendar, but now we’ll complain about how hot it is [laughs]. It’s going to make things… it’s going to be interesting because summer brings up challenges with greasy tracks, like finding grip is gonna be an issue, tyre life – alll that type of stuff. In terms of fitness, it’s harder when it’s hotter. Potentially, there’s storms and rain, so it’ll be interesting to see what it brings. Again, like I said, you come up with a plan, you turn up, you do your job and see how it goes.

Image: Foremost Media.

Now, the day for you today, just did what you needed to do, up front early and rode a pretty normal two races.

Yeah, look, I don’t feel like I could have done anything else. You know what I mean? I felt like I didn’t really make too many mistakes, so I was a bit conservative, but I felt like for the majority of it, I was at the limit of what I could do, without overstepping it. So, you know, One Raceway, the nature of the circuit, it’s a lot easier for us there. Our weaknesses aren’t highlighted there, whereas a bigger track like this, it’s definitely a lot harder. And for most of the weekend, I felt like we’re just sort of hanging on the back there of those front guys. Really, to get the round win was just a bit of luck, almost. Like, we probably didn’t have the exact outright speed as much as Josh had, and like even Cru [Halliday], for example. But they had some bad luck and that led us to a round win.

Good job this weekend. Congratulations on the round win and we’ll see you back in 2026.

Thank you very much.