By Russell Colvin
Jam Jerrup’s Zack Johnson has ignited his 2021 Australian Supersport 300 Championship in exceptional style at Winton Motor Raceway last weekend at the second round of the mi-bike Motorcycle Insurance Australian Superbike Championship (ASBK).
Refining his lap times throughout Free Practice on Friday, and working hard on bike setup, The 21-year-old qualified in seventh place with a 1min32.463 when it came down to the business end of the weekend on Saturday morning.
While it may not have been first place, Johnson was the first Kawasaki rider on the time sheets, with the category being made up of Yamaha YZF-R3’s and Kawasaki Ninja 400’s.
The opening race of the season on Saturday afternoon saw Johnson getting a decent start off the line. He held down seventh place for the first portion of the race. However, towards the end of the race the tyres started to fade away, which saw him finishing the nine-lap race in ninth place.
Nevertheless, the race went pretty smoothly, according to Johnson.
“Ahead of the second race tomorrow, the team will make some gearing changes to the bike, which will hopefully allow me to run with the leading group of riders,” he explained.
“It’s just nice to finally get the first race out of the way, as now we can really see where we are, in terms of race pace and what we need to fix on the bike.”
Race 2 on Sunday morning proved to be a much better outcome for Johnson.
Once again, it was another solid start off the line and Johnson was able to stay with the leading group of riders for the first three laps of the race. After lap three, a second group was formed which saw Johnson in a four-way dice for fifth place.
With drama up ahead of Johnson, he managed to keep his nose clean and power his way to fifth place, 5.586sec ahead of the next rider.
Proving to have his race starts down to a fine art, Johnson yet again got off to a flyer in the third and final race of the weekend.
Unfortunately, Johnson was unable to capitalise on his start, as he got held up into turns one and two, which made it hard for him to stay with the leading group. The end result saw Johnson coming home in eighth place – his 15th top 10 finish from 18 race starts in the Australian Supersport 300 Championship.
“Race 3 was a pity with how it panned out to be honest. I got stuck behind a few riders and was simply unable to get past them,” he said.
“I felt like if I was able to get by them, I might have been able to score a better result. You win some, and you lose some. We’ll just move onto the next round now and see what we can do there.”
With a 9-5-8 result, it handed Johnson sixth place overall for the round, scoring 41-championship points, which he was more than happy with. He was also the highest placed Kawasaki Ninja 400 rider for the round.
“The team and I came into this weekend pretty much blind, as we have not done a lot of testing on this new bike,” he said.
“So, to score sixth place overall, we can’t complain, at all.
“I’m really happy with how the weekend has gone. We have walked away with a lot of data for the bike. We’ll move onto the next round and hopefully get a bit more testing in between then and now.”
The third stop on the ASBK calendar heads to the 2.2-kilometre Wakefield Park in Goulburn, New South Wales, which is scheduled for 16-18 April.
