The race started fairly well, I was up to fifth in the first few laps but couldn’t seem to get the grip to hang with the group in front of me. I had found some good pace since the day before but felt like a combination of not really nailing the rear end setting and a slightly wrong tyre choice was costing me what I needed to be right up the front. On lap 8 I had a huge moment coming onto the Start/Finish straight where the rear came around on me. It let go, then I semi caught it but then it put me into a vicious tank slapper which nearly put me over the bike. This allowed my ex-team mate Martin Cardenas to come by. I had no answer from then on in. My pace was still pretty good and consistent right up until the last lap but I was just missing rear end grip which was costing me a few tenths a lap and what I needed to be able to close up to the front group..
We had quite a turbulent weekend in Supersport. Just like FX, it took a while before I started getting on top of the track and we also battle a few setting issues. We had similar sorts of problems with a lack of rear end grip with what we struggled with on FX, but not quite as bad. Qualifying was going fairly well, I was up to fifth before we put in my qualifying tyre in the last minutes. My first flying lap started well…but didn’t last long.
Turn 3 is a long radius left hander which has a pretty quick entry but then tightens up quite a lot on the exit. On the entry I went in hard, harder than I had done so far all weekend. The front started bouncing, a problem that we had been having in all fast corners for most of the season which was proving extremely difficult to cure. The suspension started what we call welching which then transferred through the tyre and then pushed the front, folding it and leaving me on the ground. It was a pretty fast crash, but I got away with hardly a scratch. Unfortunately I couldn’t say the same for the bike - it was a bit of write off. I was lucky to hang onto eighth because I was convinced I would get bumped back past the second row. After a very late night for my mechanics Mark, Bigman and Cathal they got another bike together ready to go in the morning.
