Young guns can now balance international careers with ASBK
Halfway through this year’s quick-fire Penrite Australian Superbike Championship at The Bend Motorsports Park in SA, we got a glimpse of what the long-awaited Summer Series will be providing.
Conditions were as variable as at Phillip Island; Saturday was hit with severe wind, showers, sunshine and downpours. The 43 crashes on the day were blamed on the wind combined with the greasy, saturated surface that hadn’t received a decent downpour for a month or so.
However, it brought out the best in both the ever-growing crop of youngsters and some old hands of ASBK Superbike.
The good news is that the timing of both this series and the new Summer Series of ASBK means that some of these youngsters, who are national contenders with international commitments, won’t disappear from our great championship.
Mention to the more experienced Superbike class riders that this year may be the changing of the guard and you will be met with derision. However, with the improvement of Cameron Dunker (in his third season in the top class at just 18 years of age and fourth overall in 2025), the addition of occasional ASBK wildcard Harrison Voight, who has focused on the Junior World Championships in recent years, ex-Moto3 pilot Jacob Roulstone and 2025 ASBK Rookie of the Year Jonathon ‘JJ’ Nahlous, there is no doubt that a shift is happening, which is brilliant for everyone. Except for the older ones with targets on their backs!
The addition of Voight and Roulstone for the season, combined with the improvement of the young contenders Dunker and Nahlous, has lifted everyone’s racing to another level. The exuberance of youth mixed with the knowledge and cageyness of experience
is sensational to watch.
The teenagers are magnificent in tearing it up and mixing it with the long established holders of the flame. Voight and Roulstone’s GP experience has put added punch into the series and the rest have risen to the occasion.
The two Superbike races at The Bend were as good as anything – if not better – you see anywhere in the world.
A few days after the meet, Voight, Roulstone and Nahlous headed to Spain for the first round of the Moto2 Junior World Championship in Barcelona. As soon as that is over they will hightail it back for the next round of ASBK at Morgan Park.
Such is the make-up of this year’s domestic racing calendar that this trio can concentrate on success here and there. Their international duties don’t clash with our rounds as in previous years that saw Voight compete in just three rounds of ASBK in 2024 but with lap records and five podiums, including a win.
These young fellas learn a lot from previous ASBK champions like Josh Waters, Cru Halliday, Glenn Allerton and Mike Jones
Take Cameron Dunker for example. He delivered his debut Superbike win in a moral-boosting moment for both Yamaha and his fledgling Blue Marlin Pools team. What a race. What a battle. What a moment! Plenty more to come.
But mercurial Waters never ceases to amaze. He was the benchmark all weekend. He may have gone backwards in race one with tyre issues, but his performance in leg two was simply astonishing. One of the very best of his now 46 victories in the class.
He sure left the young ‘uns fully aware that he is the top dog and it will take a massive mongrel effort to negate his supremacy and halt his attempts at a three-peat to make it six ASBK titles in 2026.
My interest in junior road racing was nurtured with what I had witnessed during my travels on the GP trail in the early 1990s when mini moto racing gained a foothold in Spain and Italy.
I’ve been fortunate enough to be involved for around 30 years, going way back to when Tony Hatton kicked it all off with the Moriwaki 80s that nurtured talent such as Josh Brookes, Wayne Maxwell, the late Reece Bancell and even Chris Vermeulen.
One occasion was a three-hour endurance race at the Eastern Creek go-kart track in 1999 where a senior rider was paired with a junior with 30-minute stints each. I was invited to team up with a young fella named Sutton, and did a feature for AMCN on it. An extremely surreal occasion sharing the grid with Wayne Gardner, Garry McCoy, Anthony West, Broc Parkes, Peter Galvin in the seniors and the likes of Brookes and Maxwell in the junior ranks.
Paul Edwards continued with his MRRDA series, which featured youngsters Mike Jones, Josh Hook and Daniel Falzon. It’s also where Jack Miller, Joel Kelso and Tom Edwards started their journey.
At the end of 2015, I inherited the series, changed the name to ‘GP Juniors Australia’ and incorporated the Oz Junior Road Racing Championships. Yamaha Australia provided the R15 and in 2017 the junior class ran for the first time at selected ASBK rounds.
I get ‘proud Dad’ moments when I see the kids that started in my series, including Senna Agius, Max Stauffer, John Lytras, Luke Power, Harry Kouri, Glenn Nelson, Harry Voight and a few others, and remember where they had their first taste of the tarmac. Literally!
The pathway has continued with the Oceania Junior Cup and the FIM Mini GP series (now MotoMini Australia) overseen by three-times ASBK champion Wayne Maxwell.
No sooner had the Summer Series been announced and we had riders who compete in the UK, USA and Europe inquiring. So while this long-overdue series offers race fans the chance to see our young international racers at home, its timing also has the potential for it to rival the memorable old Swann Series with overseas stars keen to grid up as well.
Bring it on!
