For Sunday morning warm-up we made a couple of tweaks but it was difficult to tell how much different it was going to be from 9.00am to 12.15 and race day was pretty hot. The setting felt so-so but with it being morning warm up there is no drastic changes that can be made as it’s a risk unless you’re sure it will work. I was 16th fastest in the morning.
For the race I had to make a decision whether to use the hardest rear tyre that we have or the just hard tyre. I had done most of the weekend using just the hard tyre so I decided quite late to stick with what I knew and went with it. And the 8 laps in the low 1min 49secs on Saturday morning were with this tyre and it felt pretty good then. We had made some adjustments to the clutch since Mugello also and all of the practice starts I was doing were pretty good.
My start in the race was also good and in my first few laps I made up good ground just off the back of the factory bikes and at the head of the kitted bikes. At the end of lap 1 I was 13th and on lap 4 I passed Giansanti and Takahashi. De Puniet had also crashed so I was up to 9th and just following Guintoli.
But already I didn’t feel comfortable with the bike, even though I was going forward. The front was not tucking, but bouncing as it had the day before and making it difficult to stay on line mid-corner and also the grip on the rear felt fairly minimal right from the start.
On lap 6, I passed Guintoli up to 8th and thought 'we’ll if I’m going forward then other people must be having the same sort of problems as well'. Then in the next 2 laps it all got worse. When I tried to open the gas mid corner the rear was sliding easily and I started to lose ground and get passed by the other 5 kit riders behind me.
Debon past me on lap 10 and almost squeezed me into the gravel which lost me a good second and let Locatelli through. Also he apparently was the cause of Ballerini’s crash so there’ll be a lot of riders out for revenge in Assen...
