Kiwis shine at Morgan Park: Durning cracks Q2, King holds championship nerve
A big highsided crash for OJC 15-year-old Lucas Hyslop the only downer on Saturday at penultimate ASBK round
Luca Durning made it into Q2 for the first time in the premier Superbike class. Tyler King banked more precious podium points in his quest to win the Supersport 300 title. Nixon Frost secured a top-10 in the same race and earned his first points in the Yamaha bLU cRu R3 Cup. Lucas Hyslop was in the hunt for a Oceania Junior Cup podium before a crash tainted his day.
Saturday at the penultimate round of Australia Superbike Championship (ASBK) had a little bit of everything for the Kiwis at Morgan Park Raceway in the Southern Downs region of Queensland, 160km south-west of Brisbane.
Durning will start Sunday’s two SW-Motech Superbike races from the 4th row of the grid after qualifying 12th. The Whanganui 21-year-old, riding for the DesmoSport Ducati team, squeezed into Q2 for the first time in his rookie year by 0.891 of second and will go in search of his first top-10 on Sunday.
Championship leader Harrison Voight (McMartin Racing Ducati) will start from pole after a 1:12.417 lap of the tight, twisty Morgan Park track. Voight’s team-mate and defending champion Josh Waters (1:12.563) and Yamaha Racing Team’s Mike Jones (1:12.863) will fill out the front row. Durning’s best lap was a 1:16.706 – 4.289 off pole-sitter Voight.
King went into the weekend with a 27-point lead in the Race and Road Supersport 300 Championship. That’s down to 21 points after his closest challenger, Queenslander Riley Nauta, backed up his two wins at The Bend in round 3 with victory in Saturday’s race.
Frost was 9th after qualifying 13th and later finished 6th in the R3 Cup race on his Yamaha YZF-R3. They’re promising results for the Wellingtonian who had qualified 9th on the R3 which is doing double duty this weekend.
King is doing what he has to do by keeping Nauta tight but Sunday’s two 300 races are set to be critical in the championship title fight, especially if the Kiwi wants a little less stress in the final round at Queensland Raceway in late June.
“Qualifying was my best to date, my first front row in P3. We tried some different gearing and we went in the right direction,” King told The Final Sector.
“Race one, I got a good jump off the start but then I was a bit too nice going into turn one and rolled off the gas a bit, there was someone on the outside of me and I didn’t want to make any contact, and it happens two other riders came around the outside of me as well, got pushed a bit inside, ran over the curb in turn two and after that Riley [Nauta] had pulled away a bit, probably a second in the first sector.
“From there I was just trying to play catch-up and found myself in a little battle in the first laps which let Riley get up to a three second lead at one point and by the time I got to the front of the group, I managed to reel him in and we finished one second behind.
“The race was just damage limitation really points wise. [I’ll] definitely learn from my mistakes, won’t make the same mistake again tomorrow. Yeah, hope to go one better tomorrow.”
Hyslop finished 17th of 18 in the opening OJC race of the weekend (race 7 of the championship) after a spectacular crash on the second to last lap. It was a cruel blow after the Orewa 15-year-old had battled his way up to 4th after qualifying 9th.
He bravely dusted himself off after the crash to finish with a badly bent handlebar and is now 8th in the Yamaha YZF-R15 title race. Rest assured, he’ll have the bit between his teeth for Sunday’s races 8 and 9.
“Was a bit of a disappointing finish to a good day…just before the white flag got overtaken and pushed onto the dirty part of the track and just got highsided,” Hyslop said.
“Bit unfortunate but managed to get it going again, finish and bag some points so yeah…some points is better than none. Hopefully we can get a better result tomorrow and maybe get on the podium.”
