Brayden Elliott has extended his lead in the Australian Supersport Championship at the latest round of the Australian Superbike Championship at Perth’s Barbagallo Raceway, with pole position and a clean sweep of race wins helping Brayden to open up a 19 point gap to his nearest competitor.
On combined times from Friday’s three practice sessions, Brayden secured the fastest lap with a 58.277, just 0.1 seconds ahead of second, reflecting the closeness in the field around the short Barbagallo track. A subsequent improvement in lap times during qualifying saw Brayden take provisional pole in the first session with a 58.235 which proved to be enough to secure the Tumut rider the number one placing for race one. The second qualifying session saw Elliott record a 58.353.
After securing pole position, Brayden continued his trend of successful results, taking the win in race one by 3.6 seconds. With the win filling the 20-year-old with a wealth of confidence, Elliott went on take the win in the second and final race by 1.6 seconds, subsequently handing him the round win and helping to extend his lead in the series.
Brayden Elliott:
“On the back of our successful performance at Morgan Park where I managed to claim the Championship lead, we held plenty of confidence in the lead up to Barbagallo. With it being my first time at the track and many of my opposition riders having ridden plenty of laps around the circuit, I knew I had to make the most of our practice sessions to develop a fast setup.”
“We made good progress early on, recording the quickest time across the three practice sessions and transferred that into pole position in qualifying which set us up perfectly for the two races on Sunday. To come away with the win in both races and extend our Championship lead was a great achievement for the whole time for our first ever trip to the west.”
“I firstly can’t thank my parents enough for their constant hard work and efforts in making it possible for me to compete, in particular for them to drive all the way across the country. The support and advice of Phil Tainton and Shawn Giles has been incredible and to all my sponsors, without you, the Hankook Tyres Suzuki GSX-R 600 wouldn’t be on track.”
Brayden’s next event is round three of the 2015 Swann Insurance Australasian Superbike Championship which takes place at Sydney Motorsport Park, Eastern Creek, NSW from 26-28 June.
-ENDS-