Australian Tom Toparis Announces World Supersport Wildcard at the Australian WorldSBK Round
For the third in his career, Tom Toparis will line up on the FIM World Supersport Championship grid at the Phillip Island Grand Prix Circuit, racing as a wildcard rider at next weekend’s Grand Ridge Brewery Australian Round.
Toparis, who hails from Goulburn, in New South Wales raced as a wildcard rider at Phillip Island in 2018, where he came home in 15th position respectfully, scoring one world championship point, while the following year he improved on his position with a 11th place in the 16-lap race.
This year will see the double Australian Supersport Champion, take to the grid with the Stop and Seal, headed by Irishman Robbie Bolger.
“I’m really excited, because this has been a thing that Robbie and his wife, Claire, the Stop and Seal team and I have been talking about since I met them late last year,” Toparis told the Phillip Island Grand Prix Circuit.
“I’m super grateful for Robbie to have made this opportunity a reality. There has been a lot of passion from Robbie’s side for this project, so I’m excited to have been chosen for the job at hand,” he added.
Toparis and the Stop and Seal team started preparing for this wildcard at last year’s penultimate round of the Australian Superbike Championship at Phillip Island Grand Prix Circuit in late October, 2023.
The team was pretty much thrown together quite quickly and Toparis didn’t really get to do what he wanted to, as the young 23-year-old broke his wrist in race two at The Island after high siding out of Turn 12.
However, Toparis knows that he has a good team around him to get the job done.
“The team are 100% behind me, including my dad, [Richard Toparis] who has been helping out as well,” expressed Toparis.
“In terms of the bike, we will have parts coming which we will have for next weeks official two-day test. Hopefully these parts will make the bike a very competitive bike.”
Not only that, the team have slightly better electronics and a data engineer by the name of Kevin van Leuven coming all the way from the Netherlands, who will be working alongside Toparis next week.
“To have Kevin in our corner will be a huge help for me personally to try and extract the most out of the weekend. Why I say that is because the other week at the Hartwell Motorcycle Club round which we used as a test weekend, we got to a point where we were doing low 34’s and that was with the bike as it was. Now with the addition of Kevin, I’m really hoping we can get that little bit extra which will keep us in the game. I believe we can do a really good job,” expressed Toparis.
Toparis says a top ten would be great in terms of a race result, however he has to keep in mind these riders are best in the world. Toparis is setting his goal to produce 1min33’s lap times around.
“If I can do 33’s I’ll definitely be more than happy with how the weekend goes.” Image Credit: Russel Colvin
“Last time I’ve done the wildcards I was probably bit too conservative in the races and just wanted to bring it home. Of course, I want to bring it home again this year, and get a result but I just hope that at the end of the weekend I have extracted most out of the bike and the tools that I have been given. I don’t want to get to the end of the weekend and think that I could’ve taken a few more risks,” he explained.
With Toparis having spent one solid year racing in the British Supersport Championship in 2023, where he finished third overall in the championship with 288-points to his name, he believes that time racing in the BSB championship will more than likely help him out next weekend.
“This is my first time coming to the Island knowing what I know in terms of how to ride a full blown Supersport bike, so I’m looking forward to kind of approaching the weekend a little bit differently. I’m a smarter rider now and more of it will be done in the pit box, rather than just out on the track. I’ll work closely with Kevin, Robbie and the team and see what we can come up with.” Finished Toparis.
