In the latest of his exclusive columns on Crash.net, reigning World Superbike Champion Troy Corser tells us about his lucky escape in Australia and two second places at Valencia...
Hi guys, how’s it going?
I have to start by saying congratulations to
Troy Bayliss and
Lorenzo Lanzi on their double podiums this weekend at Valencia; I can’t really complain with two second places. In race one my race strategy worked well, I got a good start, got in front and tried to pull away but I wasn’t able to get the same lap time as I had on Saturday. I was sure Bayliss had a harder tyre than me and I couldn’t shake him. After ten laps I tried to save the tyre and keep some for the end of the race but Troy had more tyre left and he got me. In race two I tried harder at the start and got away, then I hit a false neutral at the hairpin and that allowed Bayliss to catch me. There was a lot of slipping and sliding around out there!
Since Philip Island I’ve been working on getting myself back to one hundred percent fit. Although I didn’t really injure myself too much, I had a small crack in my little finger which was giving me a bit of a problem and some pretty bad bruising that I had to try and get rid of, get it to break up and disperse. Fortunately, being in Australia I had my trainer there and he worked with me every day before I left, so basically I was one hundred percent when I did leave.
My crash in Philip Island was a combination of things, it was a bit of my mistake and a setting on the bike, we made a small adjustment on the bike between the races with the spin control and basically it didn’t spin as much as it did in the first race, so when it did spin it gripped like it was supposed to do, but it caught me out I wasn’t expecting it. It threw me over the handle bars basically, the crash itself wasn’t so big but the circumstances after I hit the ground were quite considerable.
