Australian Superbike
Today’s Racing Insider will be a very low key column compared to most Mondays following the unfortunate incident which caused the abandonment of the second round of the Woodstock Bourbon Australian Superbike Championship.

We’ll have more on the accident later, but it was nice to see the riders stand up and vote that they didn’t feel comfortable racing after the incident, and it was even better to see Motorcycling Australia take the riders’ opinions into account despite their scheduling of a revised afternoon race schedule.

Some may have wanted to continue racing, but it was in the interests of all in the series that the event be called a day as complete focus in the high paced world of motorsport racing is essential.

Moving on to a more positive note it was a great event over the opening couple of days, with International Entertainment Group (IEG) doing a good job in their first standalone event as the new ASBK promoters (see blog for a full rundown).

On-track action was exciting over the practice and qualifying sessions, with a gaggle of top flight riders doing battle throughout the sessions, but it was Glenn Allerton’s record-breaking pole position time that moved him into the joint championship lead with round one winner Josh Waters.

“I planned to come out of this round with the championship lead, but scoring the point for pole is another step ahead and now we are tied so I look forward to the next round in Queensland now,” reflected Allerton, the defending Superbike champ

We’ll post more on the round in the days to come, but check out our images from the weekend in the Gallery section for now. There are also more images to come in the following days.

All results from the sessions and races that were run can be found at Computime.

Haga did the double for Ducati Xerox in Valencia

World Superbike
Yesterday’s World Superbike event at Valencia in Spain wasn’t quite as exciting as the opening rounds, but Noriyuki Haga answered any questions as to how he’s going adapting to the Ducati by taking a fantastic double victory.

It has allowed him to extend a 50 point lead over Yamaha rookie Ben Spies, who crashed out of race one in spectacular fashion and then rebounded for second in race two.

Nori now has a two race points lead effectively, so it will be up to ‘Big Bang Ben’ to start taking victories and pinning back the Japanese veteran. It looks like this year will be a battle between those two.

As for the Aussies, Troy Corser had a phenomenal start to race one and was in fourth until he crashed out on lap two, and then tyre troubles again plagued to double world champion in the second leg. Either way, I still expect BMW on the box at some stage through this year.

Kawasaki’s Broc Parkes had a great run in race one to finish with a top 10, as did Brendan Roberts with his best qualifying performance yet. Karl Muggeridge is also going to improve now that they are back in Europe and his team can finally begin to bolt on go fast parts.

Ant West scored his second podium of the year in Supersport after losing the race on the last lap to Cal Crutchlow, but it is great to see Ant back up front and enjoying his racing again.

Mark Aitchison made it two Aussies in the top five with another great performance, and keep an eye on him in the next few European rounds because he’s proved strong on them in recent years after a year of Superstock 1000 racing under his belt.

World champion Andrew Pitt had a disastrous round with 13th position, although considering he didn’t score points at all in Valencia last year he is a step ahead already after what you’d have to say is his bogey track of the series.

Roll on round four.

American Superbike
Mat Mladin reigned supreme once again in the American AMA Superbike Championship round at Road Atlanta, taking an easy double victory for the weekend. It wasn’t all easy though, as a damaging warm-up crash on Sunday ruined his race bike. Let’s hope it wasn’t the one that Suzuki had up for sale for $US59,000 directly after the round.

Aaron Gobert had a difficult weekend with overheating problems on the Trifoglio Racing Honda as he scored a 16th and 13th for the weekend. It’s a small team, although they are hoping that the problem is rectified by the next round.

In Daytona SportBike news just quickly, congratulations to Roger Hayden, who finished second in his comeback ride after missing the opening rounds of the season due to reasons that we still don’t really know.

Check out the Press Releases for the full rundown on the happenings over the weekend.

Australian Motocross
Defending Australian MX Nationals Champion Jay Marmont called it in his Moto Talk interview with us last week as he told us to keep an eye on Woodstock Honda’s new recruit Todd Waters, and he was right because Waters went on to win the opening round over Marmont and returning international star Andrew McFarlane.

In a new format that saw three 20 minute motos rather than the traditional pair of 30s, Waters’ consistency was stronger than the rest, although Marmont proved his might in the final moto yet again by taking victory in the last race of the day.

The Lites class was won by Tye Simmonds, who is the reigning Under 19s Champion from last season. Simmonds won the round over current champ Luke George and Kirk Gibbs.

In a fair display of how close the MX Nationals are, out of the six Pro motos (three for Pro Open and three for Pro Lites) there were six different winners, so get out to a round as soon as it comes to a town near you because all indications are that the racing this year will be closer than ever.

American Supercross
There’s only three rounds to run and five points separates Chad Reed and James Stewart in AMA Supercross, an FIM World Championship, and following a titanic battle at Jacksonville in Florida on the weekend it’s very hard to say who will be crowned in Vegas come the finale in May.

The series takes a break this weekend, but Reed and his Rockstar Makita Suzuki are going to fight all the way it seems, especially after Chad lead 15 of the 20 laps in the main event on Saturday night.

It’s getting intense too, with Reed and Stewart having words after the race about some passing manoeuvres, so it’s all going to come down to who can fight the hardest over the final few rounds.

Keep your fingers crossed for Chad.

World Motocross
What a great result for New Zealander Josh Coppins in the Bulgarian round of the World Motocross Championship as a pair of second places handed him the overall for the round, which was his first victory in over a year! Coppins moved into second overall in the points, just one point behind Ken De Dycker,which will do his confidence wonders as he looks to regain the form he had in 2007. Check out the full report in our Press Releases section.

We may update this with more later after a flight to New Zealand this morning.