Current Australian Superbike Championship (ASBK) leader Josh Waters led the Australian contingent at this year’s Suzuka 8 Hours, finishing just shy of the podium with the Ducati Team Kagayama outfit. In Conversation, the Victorian reflects on his campaign in Japan as he returns his focus to the remaining Australian Superbike rounds.

Talk me through Suzuka this year, finishing fourth is a pretty impressive result…

Yeah, so Suzuka this year I got to ride the Ducati – the bike was completely different to the one I normally ride – but it was still great and great to do the event again. I always say it was hot and it was hard, but it was boiling hot this year.

Ducati made a larger effort the event this year, what was it like to be involved in that program?

It was really cool – we did have factory support, but it’s still a privateer team. The team did a great job – it’s hard at the end when you’re going against the full factory teams. It was always going to be tough, but we knew that going in.

It seemed as though the team was pretty consistent throughout the whole race sitting around that fourth position. Was that the strategy to settle in and maintain track position?

Yeah, we were a bit unlucky at the pit stops. Our first pit stop we lost a bit of time – it was our first time working together again and there were a lot of lessons learned. In the first stint, Ryo did a fantastic job and he was in second, and unfortunately we lost a bit of time when the bike had to be restarted. That’s time consuming in an event like that where pit stops are so crucial – you’re busting your arse to make a tenth or two, or a second here and there. This year not many teams had any bad luck – it’s a normal thing every year that a few teams will have mechanical breakdowns or crashes – there was only really one team that had bad luck like that, and that was the TSR team.

Does that make you rate the result more highly considering majority of the major contenders finished?

Yeah, a bit like that! I’m sure everyone did have things go wrong, but it wasn’t like bikes stopping and pushing them back. There were no safety cars – normally you can either win or lose big time when there’s a safety car. The aim was for a top five, and to battle with the top three was great. We just didn’t get there, but it was a great effort.

Obviously last year you suffered that wrist injury which then impacted your ASBK campaign, are you relieved to have left Japan healthy?

100 percent. That was a big thing for the team – they didn’t want any crashes, they wanted to finish the race. It was great to get out of there with some more track time and now I’m looking forward to Phillip Island in a month or so.