Aaron Slight

Aaron Tony Slight is a New Zealand former professional motorcycle road racer. He competed in the Superbike World Championships from to, finishing second in the championship twice and third four times. He later competed in car racing and was a television presenter for AA Torque, a motoring show on New Zealand television.

Motorcycle racing career

Born in Masterton, New Zealand, Slight was Australian Superbike Champion in 1991, before spending most of the 1990s racing in the Superbike World Championship, amassing 87 podiums, 13 wins and 8 pole. For many years he was the only rider to win the Suzuka 8 Hours race for three consecutive years, having done so in 1993–1995. This feat has been repeated only recently by multiple Japanese Superbike Champion Katsuyuki Nakasuga in 2015–2018. Although Nakasuga was only declared a winner in 2018 due to being part of the three rider team even though he did not ride in the race due to an injury. Officially Nakasuga is a four-time-in-a-row winner but in reality he has only matched Slight's three time record respectively.
Slight won his first WSB race during the 1992 Superbike [World Championship season|1992] season on a Kawasaki for Team Moving Kawasaki. On a factory Castrol Honda he was third overall in 1994 and 1995, taking his first Honda win at Albacete. The only real low note was Laguna Seca in 1995, where a poorly handling Honda and many local wildcards left him 18th on the grid. He was runner-up to Troy Corser in 1996, and third again in 1997 as teammate John Kocinski won the title.
In 1998, Slight was second to Carl Fogarty by 5.5 points, only missing the title due to mishaps such as a last-lap engine failure at Monza, a last-lap incident with back-marker Jean-Marc Deletang at Philip Island, and missing race 2 at Laguna Seca due to a startline pileup on the aborted attempt to restart the first race. He did however take his first career double victory, at Misano.
Slight did not win a race in 1999; he crossed the line first in race 1 at Hockenheimring after passing Carl Fogarty on the last lap, but a red flag had been shown due to an incident elsewhere on the track, so the results were taken a lap back. Ironically, as Fogarty had already clinched the title, he did not need to win the race. Slight missed the start of the season in 2000 and then made his final appearance in the opening round of the 2001 American Superbike Championship at Daytona Speedway.