The historical Monza circuit played host to the fifth round of the Superbike World Championship last week end. It turned out to be quite a difficult week end for AXO riders Chris Vermeulen and Max Neukirchner, even if they both managed to score championship points.

Chris was once more held back by both his 18th place qualifying position and pain and weakness in his injured knee. The Aussie rider fought every lap as hard as he could and scored 18th and 13th place finishes in the two 18-lap races.

Chris Vermeulen: “In each race I got a very good start, but in the first race we had tried to make a few small set-up changes on the bike, but it was in the wrong direction. Physically it made the bike very hard to handle, to change direction, so I was very tired after race one. My lap times were a lot better in race two and the bike was good, it was just my leg that is still the main thing stopping me from racing to my full potential. But I was happy with the progress in race two and racing with someone like Max Neukirchner, so it wasn’t too bad.”

Max Neukirchner did not enjoy a trouble-free raceday, struggling with chatter in race one and then having to fight back from last place in race two after being forced off the circuit on the opening lap.

After making a step forward at the final round in Holland, Max Neukirchner was unable to consolidate on improvements to his Hannspree Ten Kate Honda CBR1000RR. The German qualified ninth but suffered chatter problems in race one which relegated him to a 12th place finish.

Small changes to the bike produced a better package for race two, but Neukirchner was forced into the gravel at Monza’s famous Ascari chicane on the first lap, rejoining the race in last place but fighting back for another 12th place finish.

Max Neukirchner: “The chatter was really bad in race one but the changes we made improved the bike a lot for race two. Unfortunately, as we went into the Ascari chicane on the first lap, Chris Vermeulen was on the inside and made a mistake which forced me right across the gravel. When I got back on the track I was in last place, but the changes to the bike allowed me to brake deeper into the corners, with better grip levels and I could get on the throttle faster on the exit. It was an improvement and we’ve learned some more this weekend but the results were still not good. We need to work on braking even deeper and getting the bike upright earlier, and we’ll try to do that next weekend in South Africa”.

Enjoy pictures of the beautiful AXO grid girls!!