Foggy Petronas Racing rider Steve Martin takes us through Assen and Lausitz, plus describes how he feels about his last Imola event with Petronas in his exclusive Crash.net column.
I am looking out my window on the Monday morning before Imola and the rain is pouring down. It’s not often that a rider hopes for difficult conditions, but they have certainly been helping us out, especially at Assen a few weeks ago.
Going into Assen there was a lot of talk about the new track lay-out and whether it would be better for racing and so forth. In my opinion they need to change the name of the track from the Assen TT to something boring like Assen Circuit. To me the track has lost a lot of its character but I guess they had their reasons for the change.
It was great to see a lot of Brit supporters coming over as it is a great boost to all the riders to know that you guys support our series. The races were far from easy but, because the conditions were difficult, we managed to get our best results of the year. I don’t get too excited about 11th and 12th place but we certainly earned those results given the difficult conditions. My guys made sure I had the right set-up and right tyres at the right time. In race one I was having lots of difficulty into the braking areas as the rear wheel kept locking up, but I decided to stay out there and used my head to collect the points, as it was more a fifty-fifty chance of finishing or crashing - which is strange because normally Assen has plenty of grip in the wet.
Race two was pretty confidence-boosting for me. I managed to pass about seven or eight guys on my way to my best result of the year so far. My bike was working really well on worn tyres where the other guys seemed to be struggling for grip. Nevertheless I was stoked to get a bit of passing practice; something I hope will come in handy in the future.
