Australian Superbikes, Winton – Sunday 22^nd October 2006

Ben Warden	Hyundai	Mark Rigsby	BMW 318i
Paul Southwell	Redwing Bus	Bill Wee & Friend	Porche 993 Cabriolet

It is a lazy 210 km up the Hume to Winton, 10 km past Benalla, freeway the whole way. Rather than riding I volunteered to take willing members in the car but they all either piked out or, in Bills case, took a friend and drove themselves.

It was a brilliant day with the temperature in the late twenties though standing out in the pounding sun it felt quite a bit warmer. I missed the Winton exit and had it confirmed when I realised the stream of bikes going the other way could only be going to the races.

There are a lot of good things about Winton and this meeting. Number one, it is the cream of Australia’s racing talent on display. It was the last round and hence a number of championships were being fought down to the wire. In all there were 16 races which is excellent value. Spectating is brilliant. You can drive to any point on the circuit, get out of your car (or even stay in it), check out the view, and then move to the next vantage point, at your leisure. Access to the pit area is free and the general atmosphere is friendly. No security heavies anywhere. Bill, Friend and I even found ourselves peering over the main straight wall opposite the pits until it was noticed that Bill was consuming a can of beer and we were asked to move along.

I arrived around 10.30 am having missed the first race but just in time for the start of the Superstock Cup (600s, almost stock). Other classes racing on the day included two rounds of the feature classes, Supersport and Superbike, 125 GPs, Naked Bikes, Sidecars, Formula Extreme (stock GSXR1000s, Zx10s, CBR1000s, Triumph 675 and some zx6, R6 and CBR6s) and finally V-twins.

In the naked class (FZ1s, BMWK1200Rs, KTM SuperDuke, Aprilia Tuono) they mixed in the “Nakedbike Lites” (Ducati Sport 1000, FZ6s and Honda Hornet 600s, and the Forgotten Era (pre December 31, 1980) which included the likes of Ken Wooten on a CB750, Karl Corpe on a 1978 Z1R, Robbie Phyllis on a 1980 GSX1100 and Rex Wolfenden on a Honda CB1100R. This is a brilliant class where the young guns mix it with the old stagers, the classic youth versus age and guile. It was fantastic watching Phyllis get in amongst it, the racer instinct still burning madly. And being able to stand in the pits a few feet away and listen to him enthusing about the race. Brilliant.

The Superbikes, of course, are fantastic, and my favourite corner offered plenty of passing manoeuvres under brakes and the most crashes! The ambulance was only called out once during the day. Stauffer riding an R1 absolutely blitzed the field, two seconds quicker in qualifying and a second a lap quicker in the race. He lowered the lap record from 123.31 to low 122s, bettering the V8 Touring Cars which is saying something. He also cleaned up in the Supersport 600s, clearly a class above the rest of the field.

I didn’t catch up with Mark as he was flag marshalling at turn three all day. Rather, I spent most of the day with Bill and Friend as were slowly worked our way through the pit area and across to my favourite corner opposite the start finish line, where the old track meets the new. It is geographically close to the centre of the track and offers views of almost every corner. You spin on one spot as the bikes seem to ride around you.

Redwing had set up camp a little way up Dunlop Straight, a couple of hundred meters away. We caught up with Paul and the Redwing Crew and enjoyed a sausage.

Last race around 4 pm and home by 6.30 pm on a single tank. Maybe next time we will get a few more takers.

Ben Warden

Friend = Cherise