The Yamaha Racing Team finished the 2023 Australian Superbike Championship on a positive note with Cru Halliday and Mike Jones finishing second and third for the round respectively and Halliday taking third in the championship with Jones just a few points behind in fifth.
In perfect conditions at The Bend Circuit in South Australia, the final round of the championship had a bit of everything to keep crowd on the feet and the YRT 2-3 finish showed the riders and team battled all the way to the end.To view the YRT ASBK bLU cRU round Review: https://youtu.be/bfR2Ip6vuYM
With the championship out of reach for the YRT men, the fight was on for third place as six points separated Glenn Allerton, Cru Halliday and Mike Jones as they entered the final round of the season. Whoever of those three riders had the better final round would stand on the championship podium.
Halliday stormed his way to a second place on the day with his 3-2 results and snared third in the championship. He showed good pace all weekend, beating personal best lap times at the venue and taking P3 in the final qualifying session.
In typical Halliday fashion, he made a meal of the start in race one and immediately lost three positions as the Superbike field hurdled into turn one. After a lap or two, he settled into the race and began to move forward, taking fifth, then a couple of laps later moving into fourth, before zeroing in on teammate Jones with less than a handful of laps to run.
He made a lunge and Jones in turn one and missed the apex of the turn allowing his teammate back past, but it was short lived as the next lap around, Halliday was able to make the pass stick and lock down third in the opening race.
Race two and while his start was better, it still allowed the front trio to break clear as he worked his way into fourth. Then Josh Waters, running in second place, went down handing him third and with a lap to go, he passed Jones and took second for the race and enough points to claim third in the championship.
“It’s awesome to finish the year well and get a good result at this track. Last year I struggled here but I felt much better this year and that showed in the results.
“The first race was good, well everything apert from my start which was awful, but I felt good on the track and was able to run a good pace all the way to the end. Troy and Josh cleared out early, but I would like to have been in the race with them to see if I could match the pace, but I put myself in a terrible position off the start and never got the chance to race with them.
“Race two was a team effort and I thank everyone at YRT and my teammate Mike. It was a big weekend for everyone and the end to a busy season but despite a few setbacks on the way and some challenges in the middle of the year, it was good to bounce back at the final two rounds and get a podium result for Yamaha and the team,” Halliday ends.
The Bend ends Jones’ reign as the 2022 Australian Superbike Champion. Jones wore the number 1 with pride and gave his all in the title defence but just couldn’t string together the season required to win the championship. A bike issue at round two, followed by a series of six second place finishes, with a combined losing margin of under 2 seconds with no race wins,- 33 and finally a fall while leading race one at Phillip Island had put the championship out of reach, but he kept swinging all the way to the end and finished the year with a third at the The Bend with his 4-3 results.
“I started behind the eight ball on Friday, and we were off the pace of the front two guys from there on,” Jones begins. “We closed the gap over the course of the next few days, but straight up, I couldn’t match it with Troy and Josh this weekend.
“Dylan, Andy and the team kept trying things to get me settled and I thank them for the amount of work they did, but ultimately, I just didn’t have the pace this weekend and third is all I could do.
“It’s been a frustrating season in many ways but there are a lot of things can take from it and some lessons learnt. I set my best times ever at a number of tracks, I improved considerably around Phillip Island, I was in a position to win as many as seven or eight races this year but things didn’t go my way so I will go home and have a think about what I can do better and come back next season determined to out that number 1 back on my bike,” Jones said.
Yamaha also dominated the manufacturer championship in the Superbike class with 1496 points, well clear of the nearest rival on 594.
YRT will be back for 2024 so standby for a team announcement in the coming days.