The seemingly unbeatable Troy corser was relegated to the third spot on the podium during the second race of the Corona Extra World Superbike championship at Monza last weekend.
In his exclusive Crash.net column he explains what happened and how he still managed to extend his championship lead...
Hi guys and girls, welcome to my second column for
Crash.net. I have to say that I went to Monza in quite a relaxed mood as me and the family had managed to get to our home in Europe at Monaco. There we chilled out on our boat and took in some nice weather.
We picked up our dog Tyson, who came with us to Monza, and he kept us nicely entertained the whole time!
I knew Monza was going to be tough, virtually anyone can go fast there. It is all about horsepower at this circuit and as a rider all you have to do is basically sit on the bike an turn the throttle! It is not a very technical circuit because it is all fast straights and hard braking so I knew it would be more competitive than the previous rounds.
In practice we tried some new braking combinations to try and get the optimum, we ran a race distance as I was happy with the set-up we found at the previous test and it was good to report we didn’t have any major issues.
Qualifying went as expected and as I have said before as long you are one of the last to go in Superpole, by qualifying towards the top, then no-one has an advantage over you.
That was the theory until the out-lap of my Superpole lap! The biggest black bird – I don’t know what it was – hit me on one of the fastest parts of the circuit, covering my right arm in all sorts of feathers and stuff. I had to work quickly to clear the debris and focus back on my lap.
My Superpole lap wasn’t perfect, I made a slight mistake on one of the chicanes and that cost me time. But all credit to Yukio, the guy put in a faultless lap and deserved pole, especially as it was his birthday and all.
