In the latest of his exclusive columns for Crash.net, Stobart Honda’s Michael Laverty talks about his difficult weekend at Cadwell Park….
Hi everyone,
Well what can I say Cadwell turned out to be a tough weekend, not what I had hoped for at all.
It was my first time there on a Superbike as I missed last year through injury, plus we missed the test last week so Saturday practice was quite hard work for us. We were in an out of the garage a lot making changes and we got the bike working pretty good as good as it has been lately. My race times weren’t far off Jonathan Rea and Tommy Hill, I thought if we had a dry race situation and I got a start with them then I could hang in there and maybe pull out a decent result. But things didn’t turn out that way with the weather being so changeable.
The first race was a nightmare and race two was damp at the start and it took a few laps to get into it, by the time I got by my team-mate Michael Rutter, Tommy Hill and Johnny Rea had gone up front. I settled in sixth place and then Steve Plater just pipped me on the last lap into the hair pin so I was a bit gutted about that. I think he has done that pass into there a few times in the past. I remember seeing him passing John Reynolds and Shakey into there, I did try and cover it but he came through anyway. I was gutted at losing sixth and the first race was a bit of a gutter as well as we chose wets and then the track dried up so quick. I got up to third and I thought ‘This is good, throw us a bit more rain here and we’re flying’ but within three or four laps it completely dried and our tyres were just falling to bits.
