No stranger to a challenge, gritting your teeth and getting on with the job at hand, Brayden Elliott has proved that he could make his mark on the British Superbike Championship as he starts the 2024 season on a Superbike for Dao Racing. I chatted with Brayden a few weeks ago, we discussed the plan for 2024 and everything leading to the Donington Test weekend.
SBN: Australia, Bikes… tell us how you got started.
Brayden: I grew up in a small country town, very different from the UK. My family had a few farms, lots of space and my dad always had bikes, not into racing or anything though. My dad had me on a bike pretty much as soon as I could walk and riding a bike around with training wheels. I did my first race at the age of 4 on a dirt track. It started off as a bit of fun, something for the family to do at a weekend traveling around to dirt tracks. As it inevitably does it progressed to something a little more serious as we started to chase things like state and national championships. I then progressed into speedway as well at the age of 9, which I did until I was about 17. That actually was my original plan, to come to England and race speedway. I had always wanted to try road racing, but living fairly remote in Australia it wasn’t something we really had access to and not many people were doing it. Casey Stoner was obviously a bit before my time but he had made the move to the UK but at the time for me there wasn’t much for Juniors where we lived and speedway was the more natural progression. I spent most of my younger years preparing for that. My parents were really keen on me having a trade, so I completed my apprenticeship as a motorcycle mechanic. I got my learners permit and a street bike to be able to ride to work and back, but to be honest it just wasn’t for me. I didn’t like the other vehicles and trucks on the road at all. A friend of mine had a CB600 track bike and he offered me the chance to take it for a ride on the track, I borrowed all the gear I needed for the day, turned up and rode the bike around the track. I knew straight away I preferred it to riding on the road. On the way home from the track that same day I listed my little street bike for sale and used the money to get myself a track bike. Within a few months me and dad were doing track days and having fun and soon realised that this was for me. I sold all the speedway bikes, dirt bikes and completely flipped my plan around. At the start of 2014 I lined up for my first ever club race and things really progressed quickly from there and I won the Australian Supersport championship in 2015 . I went into Australian Superbike in 2016, where I got a couple of podiums and finished top privateer and 5th overall in the championship. I also had my first taste at riding overseas too, I went over to Malysia to try out for the Malaysian Talent cup and as I was getting quite good results on my Suzuki, a team from Moto America reached out as they has an injured rider and asked if I would fill in for him, so I went over there and did three rounds for them in that championship, which was my first taste of racing away from home and getting a feel of what it would be like.
SBN: Wow, that’s a lot in short space of time. So now, you decide to make the move to England.
Brayden: Yes! I made the move to the UK in 2017 with my partner, we were both 21 at the time after setting up a ride with Craig Fitzpatrick, it seems like such a big thing to do but at the time it didn’t feel as crazy as it sounds. I had never lived out of home, didn’t even know how to turn on a washing machine, me and my partner had a long distance relationship and we had never spent more than a few days together. We had never been to England so didn’t know what to expect or where to stay so we googled the map, looked at Derby and thought , yeah that seems pretty central for the tracks, so we booked into a shared house for 6 months there and arrived at Heathrow airport with 2 30KG suitcases and got a rental car from the airport for a week. The plan was arrive at Derby and try to get our lives together in a week before we had to give the car back – and I have been here ever since! It really went from nothing to something really quickly.
SBN: So you appear to have a determined attitude to make this work.
Brayden: Yeah, I wouldn’t class myself as a really naturally talented rider. When I first started riding bikes I was pretty horrendous , but I always put in 100% effort and so did my parents. They got me the best bikes and coaches we could get and I trained and progressed and went from not making the top 24 to winning the championship. The guy who first let me out on his CBR600 on the track wouldn’t let me do it at first, as I was always a pretty chubby kid. He said if I lost 20KG he would let me go out on it, which took me best part of a year to do… so whenever I have got something in my head that I want to do something I really don’t like quitting until I have.
When I was younger I had a very big accident which involved some brain injury and had to take a lot of time to recover, and when I did start to ride again it was like the first time I had ever ridden a bike, I had to start pretty much zero again. There were a few years that were pretty crap getting beaten up.
SBN: It really sounds like there isn’t anything else you would rather be doing, you seem pretty committed to racing.
Brayden: No, nothing else (chuckles) My apprenticeship was only ever to really benefit myself personally and my knowledge. I could have gone and worked for someone but really it was to build my knowledge, it’s always been bikes.
SBN: How did No Bull Racing form.
Brayden: Well in 2017 it went from heaven to hell all pretty quickly, I had come to the UK off the back of winning the Australian Championship and two superbike podiums, I had the goal of going to world superbikes and saw the British superbikes as my ticket to that as that seemed to be common thing with riders. I thought, right I’ll do a year of stock thousand, get the feel of living away from home and use moving to England as a bit of a set up for moving to worlds. I really hadn’t followed BSB that much and really thought of it as a stepping stone to go somewhere else. I turned up thinking like I was going to smoke everyone, I’ll smash this in the first year, I’ll win it. First Round was Donington Park, I hadn’t ridden the bike before or the track and qualified 3rd for my first ever race. This was what I expected, this was my expectation and had a good race. But.. then we moved to Oulton Park, Knockhill, Cadwell , all these tracks that you really can’t learn in a 20 minute practice session and I just started crashing. I had never really been a crasher before I came over to the UK and now I had a really big problem. Although teams expect crashing, this was mental and frankly they lost confidence in me and I lost confidence in them and myself, so went from qualifying 3rd at my first race and finishing 6th or 7th by the end of the year qualifying 35th and barley making the cut off for the grid. So I lost that ride at the end of the year. So I needed to buy a ride, if you wanted to stick around in the paddock you needed to bring money to a team and I couldn’t really afford much so I went with a ride that was affordable and they promised a lot, so I thought it would be good place to start again. Long story short, it didn’t really exist and wasn’t what we thought it would be and they did a runner with my money, so I missed the first few rounds of 2018. I was working two jobs, my partner is working and we are doing everything we can to try and get back on track, literally, but it just wasn’t happening and I really lost a lot of trust in teams after being burnt to so bad and it really was a bit of a rock bottom for us. We had to move out of our house into a 1 bedroom flat but we weren’t really prepared to go home, I always said I would only go home if I had given it 100% and I could live with it, but I really felt like I hadn’t given it my all yet. All my contacts were with Suzuki Australia, so I phoned up and pulled in a lot of favours and bought a bike through Suzuki UK that I owned personally and then had everything for the bike build sent over from Australia. The bike dealership that I was working with at the time allowed me to work on the bike in the evening and I built my own stocker to go back out on track. Looking back it was a disaster, like I needed to do it as I needed to get back out riding but I was in a borrowed van, 1 bike and no spares me and my Mrs turning up and a volunteer to help who had never even been to BSB to just help me. I wouldn’t have been competitive at a club race let along a BSB race but I was doing everything I could to try and keep going and that was pretty much the same through 2019. Scraping together what we could to try and keep riding, but it really wasn’t happening. The only good thing to come out of it was it gave me time to build up my confidence again on the bike and learn the tracks all under the radar a bit and get going a bit. In 2020 I joined up with some other privateer guys, rented a space in their awning and helped me on the tools a little bit which helped me not having to do it myself over a race weekend, which is a massive help. I got my first podium that year in the stock thousand class which was a real turning point. It was the only one that year but we got a few top tens and all the while doing it out the back of a van, so it was definitely pretty crazy. 2021 was very similar, I was always a top 10 runner but didn’t manage to get another podium and I started to get more interest from sponsors and that helped massively with things and we started to get a bit of momentum. I really felt like I wasn’t giving the racing or myself what they deserved, be it through budget or not having the mechanics or not being able to put new tyres in for sessions.
SBN: So, 2022…
Brayden: yeah 2022 was the break out year for me, I had a really good sponsor at the time which came in and helped me with some new Hondas which I was keen to run and helped with budget to run which helped me big style there and was the first time I felt like I had a bike that could do the job, people around that could help me and the results were strong. I was still my own main crew chief, still doing the electronics and suspension myself over a weekend but I had guys now that were there helping me and a real team vibe and that showed in the results. However, at the end of the season if someone asked me, great, now do it all again I don’t think I would have. The enjoyment factor was really gone and the whole situation was both mentally and physically draining. I was diagnosed as being diabetic and it was the first time I thought, if this year didn’t lead to me going with a team, then yes it would be disappointing but I was prepared to go home knowing I gave it everything. I physically couldn’t have done anything else that year – I gave it everything I had.
SBN: But it did. You landed a ride with Dao Racing Team.
Brayden: Thankfully it did, it resulted in interest from Dao and joining the team. A team that could just let me worry about my riding, which I am massively thankful for. I wish the 22 season had happened four or five season earlier, I think I had the ability to do it then but there was so many things I didn’t know back then. I can see why so many Australian riders come here and stay here, now I can understand why. I didn’t realise then that BSB was as competitive as it is, it’s special and looking back to my original plan of worlds, i’m obviously a bit older now and that opportunity may have gone but I am really happy at BSB. I think a BSB round is cooler than a worlds round anyways now!
SBN; Any other platforms that you’d like to try?
Brayden: World Endurance interests me for sure, I like that it’s a bit of a team thing and that riders need to dig deep for long stints. That would really motivate me, test yourself. Fitness and diets, the whole lot.
SBN: Fitness, I saw that you recently underwent a pre-season fitness test. How did that go?
Brayden: Yes the team organise it, together with our fitness plan and nutrition for the year for both myself and Danny. The testing is part of that, we get tested every three months. We went in December to get all our baseline stuff and set our targets in where we need to improve, which holds us pretty accountable as the expectation is to improve at the next assessment. The team that does it will also be at all the rounds with us to make sure we are getting everything we need our weekend schedule.
SBN: What does your weekend nutrition look like then, especially being diabetic.
Brayden: The team organised a different kind of sweat testing, which works out how much salt we loose and works out a bespoke hydration plan to se get the right amount of sodium, electrolytes and all that sort of stuff and what we need to have over the course of a race weekend. Food wise, it’s pretty individual. Danny is more of a veggie but I am type 1 diabetic so I have different type of requirements so my breakfast will normally consist of 60g of oats, protein powder and banana. Sometimes, depending on what I can stomach over a race weekend lunch will be chicken, pasta, rice or potatos. Sometimes I have to eat a gel or something as I need to get a bit more sugar in for my blood levels or a protein bar. I also do shakes with coconut water. Try to get into a routine. Adrenaline can effect blood levels big time. They give me a range which I need to be in, which I do by sticking to a good food routine but before a race what I tend to do I is to get my blood sugar higher than I would normally like to have it just because over the course of that race or session it will drop and by the end of the session I would need to get food in pretty quick to try and bring it back up within range. If I didn’t have it topped up before the session, it would drop to low before the race or session was done.
SBN: Does your fitness regime help with your diabetes?
Brayden: I only got diagnosed in December 2022, so a lot of it has been trail and error but I have never not trained since my diagnosis and I got into a really good routine of what insulin I needed and food to eat and the training that I was doing. So I went from having say 4 injections per day I went to only needing 2 or even just 1 because the training really acts like insulin and brings my blood sugar levels down through my training. So training at the same time and the same sort of meals I managed to get it to a point where it was really predictable. However, over Christmas and new year we went to America to see my partners sister and I had three weeks off training, I didn’t eat stupid or anything but it was a holiday. I actually ran out of insulin. I didn’t expect that not training would impact it so much and I needed more insulin than I had ever done in the last 12 months. When I came back and started training again, it was bang, straight back to normal. So fitness is really key, I do six days a week training, 2 cardio training days, 1-2 hours in the gym per session and something that I have tried to be really strict on is to try and manage a least 1 day of the week to ride a bike. Luckily, I have an indoor MX track near me so I have been getting out on that and pit bikes on the go cart tracks when the weather allows. So this week I rode twice, I went to the gym in the morning and rode in the afternoon. It’s kept me busy.
SBN: Long term future plans?
Brayden: I am on a one year deal with Dao on the superbike this year, it feels like for me that they are really investing in me and with Danny being the race winning champion the expectations to get the bike up the front isn’t there from round one but they have given me all the tools and opportunity and realistic targets throughout the year. I feel really at home there and look forward to working on all that. The targets they have set me are achievable and I definitely want to do more, I really want more for myself. Progression and consistency and I think the results will come. The team is great, I get on great with Danny, done all the fitness tests together, been to Spain together and I have learnt lots from him, he’s been a really great help.
SBN: What’s your biggest impression of the Superbike switching from the Stocker?
Brayden: Probably that it’s a lot less forgiving than the stock 1000 bike, everything from how aggressive it feels, the power, the stiffness of the chassis or how powerful the brakes are. Everything is just a little bit less forgiving. On the stock bike, I felt like if you had a little bit of a moment here or there, a slide or twitch it wasn’t that big of a deal and you could power through it and its fine, but the time that I have had on the superbike if it gets out of shape it really lets you now about it, it wants to throw you off. The superbikes are designed to be ridden at a certain level and my understanding is the faster you ride it the better it gets, I don’t have a massive understanding of the bike yet and my first time really getting to ride it will be rolling out at the Donington test weekend. I think it will just be a time thing, the more confident I get and the faster I get it will feel better. Me and Danny will on the same bikes, with a great team and plenty of data so I think it will all fall into place and progression will be great.
Brayden, what is the one food you would eat for the rest of your life? “..(chuckles) Chicken Schnitzel, chips and gravy..” it’s definitely an Aussie thing, it’s a proper counter lunch at a pub.
