At the final round of the A.S.B.K [Australian super-bike Championships] in Phillip Island, the Chas Hern racing/ High Octane Motorcycles/ Pope Building Services Race team had a very tough weekend. Wild Weather and some bike issues caused a bumpy 3 days of competition.
As it was the first time for Chas in the series and also on the Dunlop Control tyre Friday testing was critical to get the Honda CBR 1000's on pace with Australia's best riders. The team showed early pace on Friday morning but rain cut short the dry testing on Friday and the ideal setup was never achieved.
Saturday morning was straight into qualifying and on the out lap in very wet conditions Chas slipped off at Honda turn breaking a front brake lever, he managed to pick the bike up and limp back to the pits and the team did an amazing job getting the bike back out with 3 laps remaining to get Chas onto the second row of the grid. Qualifying two was a wet track drying and Chas hit the top of the times sheets, but with less than a minute dropped back to second.
In Sunday Morning warm up unfortunately the A bike had some gear selection issues and had to be retired for the remainder of the weekend.
Race one was possibly the wettest race ever contended and as the lights went out Chas slotted into 4th at turn one. Slowly making his way through the field and hitting the lead briefly into turn one Chas high sided out of the race. Luckily the Honda CBR stood up and ran into the grass and sustained no damage allowing Chas to continue the race moving up to a 9th position.
Race two was dry but with limited testing the setup was a little out and we struggled with grip on both front and rear of the bike only allowing Chas to finish 4th.
Race three was again dry and the team had taken a big gamble on changing the set up but still grip was minimal on the rear and Chas finished in 5th position