Phillip Island from different angles
A V8 Supercar and Aussie superbike lap the majestic grand prix circuit at the same pace, but with very different methodologies…The Nissan Motorsport race car of Todd Kelly has taken on a slightly different persona at this weekend's (April 15 – 17) round of the 2016 V8 Supercars championship at Phillip Island, thanks to brand-new bikesales.com.au logos.
The home of the Australia's biggest motorcycle race, the Phillip Island MotoGP, is an apt location to unveil the new once-off livery, and the fact that Todd Kelly is a life-long motorcycle devotee only adds to the two-wheel flavour. But we weren’t going to leave it at that!
Just as V8 Supercars is the premier car racing category in Australia, in the two-wheel sphere it's the Australian Superbike Championship — souped-up production-based motorcycles in the same vein as their four-wheeled equivalents.
Steve Martin, the 1999 Australian superbike champion, is now a key part of the bikesales.com.au team, so we hatched a plan for him to link up with Todd at Phillip Island and discuss how they crack out hot laps in- and on their respective steeds around a circuit which has one of the highest average speeds across the globe.
It provides for a fascinating insight. The V8 Supercar lap record (on the basis that it's not broken this weekend…) is a 1:32.023, and for Aussie superbikes it's 1:32.316. But the means to the end is very different for both mediums in terms of top speed, acceleration, braking markers, braking prowess, corner speed and lines.
In fact, there's very little in common between the two, so we'll defer to the two experts:
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