Supersport went terribly until the start of the race, then it picked up, and then it went badly again. To cut a long story short, qualifying got cancelled due to the weather. This meant that our final free practice set the grid for the race. As the practice was delayed due to weather we kept our tyres on the tyre warmers. The delay was a bit longer than we expected and in the end meant that the tyres had been on their warmers, at a high heat for over five hours which doesn’t do them much good.
When I first went out to start the now 25 minute qualifying session I complained of a slimey feeling but couldn’t pinpoint exactly where it was coming from, It just felt like the whole bike. We made some changes, which I tried for two laps but it was even worse. It was then when my chief mechanic raised the point about the tyres being on the warmers for so long. We changed the rubber and it instantly felt better, I didn’t even have to push very hard and the feeling was a lot more positive. I had just about enough time to get in two flying laps. On each of my laps I found traffic through the first section which is a constant series of left to right, right to left’s and is really difficult to pass on. There were 45 riders out there in a lap time of 1min 25.0secs so it was pretty crowded. I improved my lap time on my final lap but it was still terrible and left me in 17th! I was disgusted let me tell you!
Sunday morning was much better, thankfully. I got some clear traffic and knocked almost a full second off my qualifying time. The race strategy was a pretty simple one- go for the Tarzan line around the outside in the first corner and see where it gets me! I had to do something if I wanted to give myself a chance of getting a half decent result.
