TWO THREE PR:

The sixth round of the Woodstock Bourbon Australian Superbike Championship will take place at the Australian Motorcycle Grand Prix at Phillip Island in Victoria on 16-18 October, with Oleon Motologic Racing rider Wayne Maxwell looking to continue his recent run of good form.

Racing alongside the 15th round of the MotoGP World Championship, Maxwell enters this weekend’s penultimate round just 19 points in arrears of teammate Glenn Allerton, looking to capitalise on his form around the scenic Phillip Island Circuit.

Maxwell won the non-point scoring Australian Superbike Open event at the 4.445-kilometre venue last month, also taking out the most recent round of the series with pole position and both race victories at Mallala in South Australia late in August.

For 26-year-old Maxwell, this weekend’s event marks yet another step toward the 2009 championship, rising from strength-to-strength in the second half of the season in his return to Superbike racing fulltime after spending a season in Supersport last year.

This weekend’s action will see the ASBK category contest four races across the weekend, with Sunday’s pair of eight lap races counting toward the title point standings, while the opening two races of the weekend will be non-championship events.

Maxwell and his ASBK counterparts will first hit the track on Friday morning at 9.20am, with qualifying scheduled for 11.00am and the opening race of the weekend set to get the green light late in the afternoon to kick off the racing action.

Wayne Maxwell – Superbike #47
We’ve had a day of testing at Phillip Island and we managed to make more improvements to the bike after our win at the Australian Superbike Open. I’m looking forward to this weekend, hopefully we can make the most of the minimal track time over the weekend and I’m confident that the results will come. My main competition will definitely be my teammate Glenn and Josh Waters, but having some American Superbike riders here for the weekend will also make it interesting. I’ve been slowly closing the point gap to Glenn since the Eastern creek round, and I want to ultimately close that gap and put myself in a position to win the title. I’ve closed it down from over 30 points and have managed to beat Glenn in six of the last seven outings, so I need to keep doing that and the rest will come. Everything that we take out of this race will help us for the final round next month and we don’t have much track time this weekend, so we’ll just have to be on the pace right way and get the job done, moving on from there to the final round.