Polesitter Wayne Maxwell clean swept today’s QBE Australian Superbike Championship races at Phillip Island, taking valuable points from title rival Josh Waters who was forced to settle for a pair of second places.

The Team Honda rider made up 11 points on Waters, collecting the maximum haul available from round 6 and increasing the intensity in his race for a maiden ASBK championship.

Despite starting from pole Maxwell didn’t have it all his own way, and it was Team Suzuki’s Ben Attard who blasted off the line to lead both of today’s races.

Attard relinquished the lead to teammate Waters on both occasions, and faced further setback as he was penalised for a jump start in race 2.

Behind them, Maxwell was chipping away at the riders in front and proved too quick and consistent for their defence in the latter stages.

He made his move on race 1 leader Josh Waters in the closing laps, taking the win by 1.7 seconds.

He crossed the line with a similar advantage in the second race which had previously been reduced by 2 laps due to a red flag incident.

Maxwell has notched up 6 wins to date in 2012, with 5 of them coming at Phillip Island, including two clean sweeps.

“The weekend couldn’t have gone any better, not only to get the clean sweep and 51 points, but to be able to set the fastest lap on the last lap of race 1 is a credit to the team and the way they have setup the Honda to use its tyres,” said Maxwell.

“The team have been putting in so much work to pull back these points and now we’ll head to the final round to make one last push for the title.

“It’s going to be a very tough ask but we’ll give it our best shot.”