There was a big rider/team manager meeting at about 11am and it was all kicking off! They were trying to send out the Supersport and Superstock class with no practice that day and some people were far from happy about it. In the end the AMA had their way and did what they could to try and get all the racing squeezed in and give everyone much practice with the little time that we had. At least the track was in good condition to go racing so that was the main thing.
The big upset was over the three heat races that the SBK class was supposed to have. The AMA and race promoter came up with this idea to have these 3 x 5 lap heat races for the SBKs to make it more exciting for the fans and they would not just drop the races even though we were very tight for time. In the end, all the factories boycotted the heats and there was about four riders who were all at least 15th or below in the championship in each of the now two heat races! The winner of each heat would start from the front row and whoever did the quickest time in the race would get pole. A guy who I met called Ben Thompson won his race and did the fastest lap of the two heats so was on the pole! Pretty cool for him.
We got a 15 minute FX practice session in the early afternoon and the track was pretty good. Pirelli gave me a different tyre to test but it was softer than what I was already using and as it was getting quite warm we needed to go the opposite direction with something harder. We didn’t have a lot of time to test tyres especially in the warmer weather that we were seeing. My first impressions of the tyres when I tried them the weekend before was pretty good, a lot of people say they mush around and are hard to adapt to after riding Dunlops for so many years but I found them fine. They moved around a bit but it wasn’t a big problem. I was hoping to get something a bit more special from Pirelli because I was generally in top 6-8 in both classes but there main team is one of the Factory supported Suzuki teams so they got all the good stuff.
