Double points finish for Allerton, Collins and Nicholson in the Top End

Next Gen Motorsports Superbike riders Glenn Allerton and Ted Collins have walked away from the fourth round of the Australian Superbike Championship (ASBK) in fifth and seventeenth place respectfully. After starting from eighth place on the grid, Allerton, who recorded his 157th ASBK Superbike race start, raced to a 5-4 finish to pocket himself 33-championship points for the round. The 37-year-old showed good speed in both races and said at the conclusion of the day that he didn’t think that he has ever made so many passes before in one year in his whole career. “I just seem to get bad starts and then have to claw my way back to the front,” explained Allerton, who still remains in seventh place in the championship fight with 124-points to his name. In race two, Allerton just missed out on third place by .571 seconds. Throughout the race, the New South Welshman made up a lot of ground and in the closing stages of the race was on the tail of Wayne Maxwell. Allerton explained; “I just couldn’t get to the back wheel of Wayne. I feel that if I was able to get up to his back wheel, I would have been able to draft him down the front straight. I was really trying to get to that point, but simply ran out of time.” Overall, Allerton was happy with how he performed in both races. He knows what he has to work on and on top of that, he has some ideas on how to extract a bit more speed out of the #14 BMW S 1000RR machine when it comes to qualifying. “The team and I will keep pushing forward. We are getting closer and every result we are getting is better and better, so we are heading in the right direction. I just think we need to do some practice starts and we’ll be good,” finished Allerton, who has now racked up a total of 2,677 championship points in his ASBK Superbike career. 18-year-old Collins was always going to have a tough day at the office after starting both races from twenty-first position. Race one saw Collins finishing in twentieth place. Unfortunately, the opening race didn’t exactly go to plan for him as he had some issues with the bike which caused him to struggle throughout the race. “The bike was really hard to turn and I was having to use a lot of energy to just get the lap in, let alone eighteen,” explained Collins after race one. Collins was struggling a lot towards the end of the race as he couldn’t turn the bike. Once the front tyre started to go off he had no front grip and couldn’t muscle the bike around the way he needed to. For race two, Collins and the team made some changes to the bike making it easier for him to ride. This was proven as the Victorian rider came home in fifteenth place. “We were struggling all weekend but at the start of race two I was in amongst it, racing people and making passes. That was really positive for us. I didn’t drop off as bad as what I did in the first race. The Pirelli tyres lasted pretty well towards the end of the race. I believe it was a positive day today,” expressed Collins. Collins has leaped from eighteenth to seventeenth place in the championship and now has 42-points on the board with a total of six races remaining in the 2018 season. Next Gen Motorsports Supersport rider Scott Nicholson had an ‘up-and-down’ day. Race one saw the youngster crashing out on lap seven. Nicholson admitted he was simply pushing too hard in inopportune circumstances. “I ran off at turn ten. Once you run off at turn ten, there is no stopping yourself before you hit the wall. So I just threw the bike on the ground to save the bike and myself. That was just unfortunate, as it’s another DNF for the season,” said a dejected 16-year-old. Nicholson was more than happy to turn it around in the second race and come home with some decent points, finishing in seventh place. “Overall, it was a tough weekend. However, we learnt a few things which should hopefully make us stronger for the remaining three rounds of the season. We are now heading to some tracks which I like and I know.” Nicholson understands that Morgan Park will be a tough round. A few other riders from Queensland are from that area and have ridden there a lot. “I believe if I can get some good laps at Morgan Park in practice, I should be able to be up there fighting for positions,” finished Nicholson. Team manager Wayne Hepburn expressed that the day turned out pretty positive for all three riders. “Scott had an incident in the first Supersport race and bounced back well to finish seventh,” explained Hepburn. In terms of Collins, Hepburn can see he is coming along quite well now and looks a lot more comfortable on the BMW S 1000RR. “For Glenn, his first race was fantastic. We just missed out on a podium place. With one more lap, it could have been different. I’m proud of all three of them. We just have to get better starts. It’s what’s costing us at the moment. So if we can get off the line, we will be able to run with the front riders. It’s all positive heading into the next round,” concluded Hepburn. The fifth stop of the Australian Superbike Championship now heads to Queensland’s Morgan Park Raceway, which will take place from 17-19 August.