Top team and rider abandon ASBK

In a major bombshell, a top team and rider have announced they are ditching the Australian Superbike Championship (ASBK) in 2014 in favour of a full-time transition to the rival Australasian Superbike Championship (ASC).

The Melbourne-based Next Gen Motorsports, which won the ASBK title with Glenn Allerton in 2011, was the first to put its hand up, declaring that it made the decision because “the Australasian Superbike Series offers more consistency and a brighter future when it comes to motorcycle racing in Australia”.

And then a day later, reigning ASBK No. 1 Wayne Maxwell (pictured) followed the same course, announcing he would be leaving the ASBK battlefield for the ASC title in 2014 in his own self-managed team.

The decision has gutted the already ailing ASBK of top-line talent, with the Phil Tainton-run Team Suzuki – which took Maxwell to the title in 2013 – recently announcing that it’s extremely unlikely to race in 2014 because of a budget shortfall, which forced Maxwell to look further afield to continue his career.

Team Honda (Jamie Stauffer and Josh Hook) is the only factory team which hasn’t outlined its plans for 2014, but an announcement is expected anytime soon.

If Team Honda elects to switch its allegiances towards ASC and Suzuki doesn’t manage to find an 11th hour white knight, the ASBK will be without distributor-backed support for the first time since its inception in 1987 when it was rebadged from the two-stroke biased Australian Road Racing Championship.

Next Gen will confirm its rider line-up – Allerton looks set to continue as its main man – and team structure this week, while Maxwell is still remaining tight-lipped about his plans – although he has secured a world endurance ride with Yamaha in between his Aussie commitments.

Yamaha’s Queensland-based factory has previously announced it will be continuing in the ASC in 2014, with a massive four-rider team: new signing Robbie Bugden, Rick Olson, Cru Halliday and Kevin Curtain.

Budgen rode a Suzuki in the 2013 ASBK title, when he was third behind Maxwell and Allerton. Now all three big guns are ASC bound – the V8 Supercar equivalent of Jamie Whincup, Craig Lowndes and Will Davidson setting up shop at a rival series.

The ASBK and ASC titles were on track for a merger at the end of 2013, but Motorcycling Australia (MA) backed out of the deal at the last minute – again leaving the absurd situation of two national-level road racing titles in Australia over the next 12 months: ASC with its own governing body (Australian Auto-Sport Alliance), and the MA-backed ASBK.

But now it appears all the momentum is with ASC, leaving the ASBK in a tight situation with a lack of ‘name’ riders to market ahead of its season opener at Queensland Raceway on April 5-6.

The two calendars as are follows:

ASBK

ASC