These talents are stunningly put on display as the riders negotiate the fast and sweeping turn 12 that leads onto Phillip Island's Gardner straight where rider and bike will approach a mind blowing 330km/h. Good drive through turn 12 and onto the straight is paramount for a good lap time, these riders use every bit of their abilities to maximise their speed onto the straight. A fine example during the 1 hours qualifying shootout was given by American John Hopkins as he pushed almost too hard to find those valuable tenths of a second. Approaching the exit of turn 12 at well over 200km/h, trying to use every last inch of the track, he ran of tarmac and his Suzuki was forced momentarily off the circuit kicking up gravel onto the track as the bike squirmed and broke into excessive wheelspin. Not for one moment did Hopkins contemplate easing the throttle, holding it wide open as he floated across the dirt and back onto the track. However even more impressive was that John wasn't alone, numerous rider's performed almost identical stunts as they searched for the ultimate performance from their machines, simply crazy stuff!

However the action packed weekend had even more on track entertainment including three of the Australian National Support Categories, Superbike, Supersport and 125GP. Even though the support races did not count towards the domestic championship, most of the nation's elite riders and teams were in action keen to take victory none the less. Included in the fray was SD Racing's Ian Wiltshire taking part in the Supersport category aboard his TW-Performance CBR600RR. It was always going to be a tough task to compete against the might of local factory backed teams and usual national Supersport front runners, especially considering Ian bike is now a few years out of date. But despite this the buzz of racing at a MotoGP event would far outweigh the reality of the competition the pommy import would face and he would give it his all anyway.

Ian pushing hard during qualifying

The tight schedule meant riders and teams would have minimal practice time to find a good setup for the 25min qualifying session and three 8 lap support races. Ian pushed hard in the first few laps of the qualifying session and posted a personal best time of 1:43.9 despite struggling with wheelspin. A few setup changes were made during the remainder of the session but they didn't help tame the spinning rear tyre leaving Ian unable to better his time and classified 25 th fastest of the huge 43 entrants. The 600cc Supersport Races 1 & 2 were held on the Friday afternoon and both races saw Ian involved flag to flag battles with numerous riders as the huge field rocketed their way around the 4.8km circuit. Positions were traded multiple times per lap as the Factory Yamaha trio of, Stauffer, Aitchison and O'Halloran dominated proceeding up front setting mind blowing lap times only 6 seconds off the MotoGP times. Ian managed to not only improve his grid position in both races, with 24 th in race 1 and 23 rd in race 2, but also set another new PB lap time of 1.43.7. The third and last of the Supersport races was held on the Saturday afternoon in front of a huge crowd and once again saw Ian involved in another flag to flag battle. With the tyres showing signs of wear Ian's struggle with wheelspin worsened as he tired to get to the front of the pack he was dicing with. It was tight but by the end of the 8 lap sprint Ian had found the front of the group with the smart riding to finish in 23 rd position out of the 40 riders that has started the race.

Ian Wiltshire : "It was a fairly tough weekend with the lack of testing time available. Going faster always shows up new problems but with Trevor Manley and Daz's help we got the bike to handle as best we could and made it a raceable bike. Being in the middle of a full grid through Turn 1 is quite exhilarating."

With that it was time to sit back and enjoy the spectacle put on by the premier motorcycle road racing category in the world and what a spectacle it turned out to be. The sunshine that had bathed the huge crowed all weekend suddenly disappeared as the MotoGP machine lined up on the grid and the race would start with a slight drizzle in the air. Shyni Nakano made the most of the conditions in the first few laps to build a strong lead aboard his Kawasaki . But the conditions worsened sending the rider's into the pits, to swap for their Wet Setup bikes, and the race order into chaos. When things settled down it was Italian Marco Malerndri that had delt with the trying conditions best and bolted away with the race win, once again using turn 12 to demonstrate the ability of these MotoGP men with a huge, one handed, power slide onto the start/finish straight leaving a trail of smoke and the rest of field in his wake. Aussie Chris Vemulan put on a fine display to finish 2 nd with 5 times World Champion Valentino Rossi in 3 rd .

SD Racing would once again like to thank all our usual sponsors for their continued support.

Also a big special thanks to Fran (Breast Cancer Foundation), Paul (Amelia Rose), Graham (Gratrax) and Bob (Dexam) for their increased support this weekend without which, the weekend would have been a lot harder.