Well, what an eventful first round! Despite the harsh weather and flooded garage, I still managed a podium place in race one.
We arrived at Brands Hatch at the early time of 4am on Friday morning and set up ready to go out at 10. By this point, the track was damp but my main aim of the practise day was to get to grips with both the bikes. Apart from the test day at Mallory Park last weekend, I had not been out on a bike for four months, so it was very important that we made sure everything was running alright and just get the right set-up for qualifying. This was also the first chance I had to test the new Brembo carbon brake pads that Design Corse has very kindly supplied me with for the season. They worked really well with the bike and saved me a lot of money too!
Unfortunately, a bit of overnight rain resulted in tricky conditions and I didn’t know what tyres to go out on. I went out on my wet bike first to set a banker lap then after three laps I realised that the track was drying up so I came back into pit lane to change to the 1098R dry bike. It was just my luck that the rain started spitting as soon as I got back onto the track, so I had to get a lap in before the track became too wet. Overall, I qualified 11th for the first race (Superpole) of the GP1 grid. The weather didn’t lighten up as we went onto race one, so we were still faced with uncertain track conditions and a lot of damp patches. I admittedly got a bad start as I was boxed in but by the time I got comfortable, it was too late to put in a faster time and went on to qualify in twelfth position for the Sunday races. This year, the grid positions are based around Thundersport’s new system of ‘megalaps’; which are determined by your fastest time from race one and the warm up of Sunday morning.
I woke up on race day to absolute torrential rain – there was no chance of any part of the track drying up by the time I went out! I went straight out and put my Holroyd tyre warmers onto the wet bike ready to go out on. The morning warm-up went okay; we just made a few minor suspensions changes ready for the second race. I got a good start for this race and managed to make my way up to sixth place in GP1 and first place in the superstock class. However, water had got into the electrics just as I was starting to feel comfortable and the bike started misfiring. As I went through Clearways on lap five, the bike misfired at spat me off into the gravel. It was hugely disappointing as I had such a promising start. When I got the bike back to the garage, we made the decision to put the wet tyres on to the dry bike and set out preparing it for race three. By this time, the rain was really hammering it down and the temperature dropped to as low as 2 degrees. As I set off the line, the bike spun-up and I was virtually last going into the first corner. I worked my way up to eighth place and rode a lonely race to the end.
Overall, it wasn’t the best start to a season but I got some solid points in the Superstock class. I’d just like to thank all of my sponsors for helping me this year and the whole of the Knight Road Race Team for all of their hard work for getting my out there on a competitive bike and I’m looking forward to Donington Park in three weeks.
