GLENN ALLERTON/TWOTHREE PR:

Reigning Australian Superbike Champion Glenn Allerton is confident of retaining his championship when the series resumes in five weeks time after contesting the Australian Superbike Open alongside the L&H 500 V8 Supercars round at Phillip Island in Victoria on 11-13 September.

Allerton qualified his Motologic Racing Honda CBR1000RR in fourth position after the popular one-lap Superpole Shootout session, before going on to finish the pair of 10-lap races with a fifth in race one and sixth in the second to secure sixth overall for the weekend.

The non-championship point-scoring round marked the first time that 28-year-old has finished off of the overall podium during the 2009 season, although three days of testing during the weekend sets Allerton up for a solid final two rounds of the series to be contested at the same venue.

Race one on Saturday saw Allerton in a podium position until rain began to fall just after the halfway point of the race, causing Allerton to back it off and play it safe in order to be 100 percent ready for his title charge.

It was much the same on Sunday in race two when rain began to fall in the early stages of the race, with Allerton leading the field on laps one and five before eventually deciding to settle for sixth as the rain increased.

Spectacular racing and a five-bike battle for the lead made the Superbikes a popular category during the weekend in the first two-plus-four event in over a decade, with Allerton and his Motologic Racing team gaining massive amounts of publicity in what was a solid crowd of Australian motorsport enthusiasts.

Allerton will now set his sights on the final two rounds of the ASBK series, with the penultimate round set to be held alongside the MotoGP World Championship round at Phillip Island on 16-18 October, before the final round will be contested at the same venue on 27-29 November.

Glenn Allerton – Superbike #1:
The Superbike Open was a good chance to see where we are at with the bike around Phillip Island and a great opportunity to test a few settings on the rear shock, which we have been having a few troubles with lately. I’m glad that we got that weekend in and it’s going to help when we come back for the championship round at the MotoGP. In both races when it started to rain I was in the lead group, there was nobody who was getting away from me, and then when the rain came I thought about the championship in a few weeks time and decided to hold back at that point. I’d like to win every race I go in, and I wasn’t happy to get beaten or finish off the podium, but it doesn’t really matter in the big picture because there weren’t points on offer. We managed to keep the bike upright and made sure we stayed safe, which is good because I’m feeling good on the motorcycle at the moment and I don’t want to change that. We’ll be back for the point-scoring rounds and overall it was a really good weekend alongside the V8s.