Coming off the back of a difficult weekend in Italy, it was nice to come to a track I know and I was hoping to be much more competitive!
FP - P14
I felt very comfortable initially in practice, and the bike was working well! After my first run I was knocking on the door of the top 10 but was over two seconds from the front. We timed our exit to get into the group and I was able to set fastest sectors and produce very competitive laps! Although a reoccurring false neutral problem into the last corner meant I couldn’t put a lap together. This gave me confidence, however, that we could do much better in qualifying.
QP - P15 We made no changes for qualifying, apart from a small gear lever change in a hope to remove the false neutrals - which worked! I got into the group after a bit of messing about at the start of the session, and got a couple of laps in but they weren’t very clean. Unfortunately the rest of the session was spent with the group constantly backing off and pretending to push, ultimately wasting the rest of the session. Because of the antics in qualifying, eight riders in front of me had long lap penalties to complete in race one, so I knew that I could potentially use them to pull me back to the front if needed.
Race 1 - P14 I got a decent start to race one, holding my own through the first lap before making progress through the field. The long laps weren’t as effective as I was hoping for, only costing the riders around a second, and keeping the gap that had grown between me and the front group. Now in 13th, I pushed hard to try and bridge the gap, breaking away from the group behind. I was setting very competitive laps, but without the slipstream I couldn’t gain enough time over the lap! I carried on pushing, being the fastest man on track on the penultimate lap, but was drawn back in by the rider behind and small mistake on the last lap cost me a position!
Race 2 - DNF Coming into the second race, I knew I had to get more stuck in on the first lap in order to get into the front group. I had another decent start but couldn’t find a gap through the first half of the lap, but made a lot of positions on the exit of the chicane! I pushed on the brakes into the next corner to take 10th place, but went slightly too deep and found myself coming close to another rider, just clipping their rear wheel and chucking me on the ground! Unfortunately the airbag went off and meant I was unable to rejoin, which is a shame as I could have recovered to some points.
Overall a decent weekend, even if the results don’t show it. I had a lot of potential as the pace was strong, but we still need to improve our qualifying, which hopefully we can do at Most in a weeks time!
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