In the latest of his exclusive columns for Crash.net, Stobart Honda’s Michael Laverty discusses his last few BSB rounds ….
Hi guys!
It’s been a little while since I last spoke to you so we have a lot to catch up on.
Knockhill in Scotland didn’t go too bad, just a shame my brother Eugene crashed and injured his hand badly. I actually ended up with two fifth places, it could have been a fourth in the second race, but Tommy Hill duffed me up on the start finish straight on the last lap, I didn’t manage to get him back.
All in all it wasn’t a bad weekend I was more disappointed because I felt I was riding good enough to be in the front group but I just couldn’t seem to hang with them. I was losing time at two corners on the circuit and it was just enough to let them get away, that was more frustrating than anything. It was a positive weekend and we are a bit closer to the front than we’ve been most of the year so I was happy enough, I’ve been consistently top five up until that so I was happy to keep going in that trend.
Oulton Park was a bit of a bogie circuit for me at the start of the year I struggled quiet a lot round there and my times were terrible. But last time there we just kept chipping away and every session we went a bit faster, so come the race we were down to similar lap times to the ones that won the race earlier in the season. I was happy enough with that but the unfortunate thing was the Ducatis and Hondas have moved on another step and they were nearly another second ahead again.
I finished seventh in the first race in a lonely battle with my team-mate Michael Rutter and we were maybe ten seconds off the leaders and then about ten second ahead of the rest, we were in “Nowheresville” really, just dicing between ourselves. Bit frustrating but at the same time it was good for me as I improved at Oulton and got my head round it, but at the same time you want more all the time and I just want to be up with that front group, we are just lacking something at the minute.
