Alstare Suzuki rider Yukio Kagayama had a less than ideal two races at Silverstone for the fifth round of the Corona Extra World Superbike championship.
The ex-British Superbike rider had hoped to give his legions of British fans something to cheers about, but unfortunately lady-luck had other ideas.
Yuki-san exclusively tells Crash.net what happened...
Hello Yuki-fans!
I am sorry for such bad luck during the races at
Silverstone, I had such high hopes after qualifying, I really did not want to disappoint my fans, especially my British fans that gave me such great pleasure after my accident in 2003.
I think I remember 200-300 emails whilst I was in hospital, which gave me much power to get better. I wanted to do well this weekend for everyone of those, but bad luck had its own plan.
Still I have the British flag on the front of my special bike to say big thank you to you all!
Silverstone short circuit is really hard on brakes, just how Yuki likes it! Two hairpins, and one very slow chicane means lots of tyre spin and front wheel lift - much fun!
In Superpole I was desperate to beat my friend
Noriyuki Haga who put in very fast lap. But on my fast lap I make small mistake so all round my cool down lap my heart beat was very very fast! There is no way on my Alstare Corona Suzuki to see my lap times so I had to wait long time before I knew how it went.
I came back to pits and my team say; "ahhhh Yuki, of course you are pole!" so I was very happy.
A crash in first race was not ideal, luckily I get back onto bike and ride as hard as I could to get back into points, all I could manage was to make up five places to 11th, but still those points are better than none!
We made some changes to bike for second race as I did not have very good feeling in first race. But changes did not work and I still have bad feeling, so I not push too hard as I didn't want another crash and had to settle for seventh. But still, this again was points and we have many more races to go so Yuki-san not worried just yet.
