In his latest exclusive column for Crash.net, reigning British Supersport champion Cal Crutchlow explains how he is feeling on the eve of his British Superbike bow with Rizla Suzuki at Brands Hatch this Easter weekend...
I’m really looking forward to my first British Superbike meeting at Brands Hatch this weekend. I can’t wait to get there now – I’m getting bored sitting around at home and training and stuff like that. I just want to get there and get the first couple of races out of the way.
Testing has gone really well. Rizla Suzuki have done a fantastic job and put all their efforts behind me through the winter off-season to make sure the bike is ready for the first round. We’ve made quite a lot of progress with the bike and have got through a lot of things. Together with my crew chief Pete Jennings I’ve been working on the suspension, front forks, rear shock, a lot of mapping stuff and engine power characteristics. We’ve gone through everything really so hopefully it’s now ready to go racing.
We had a couple of minor crashes, but that’s just part of the steep learning curve of riding a Superbike. You have to ride them a lot harder than you think, and the step-up from Supersport to Superbikes is a bigger one than maybe I expected because of that.
What’s encouraging is that the times have been there though – we haven’t been far off the pace. Given that I’m new to BSB this year, to be only a couple of tenths away from some guys who have been in the top three in the championship over the past couple of years and have been riding Superbikes a lot longer than me makes me pretty pleased.
