"We had a problem with the bike during the morning warm-up - when I stopped to do a practice start the engine kinda fluffed up a bit and we weren't sure what was wrong. I told the guys when I got back, they stripped the engine down and basically we couldn't get it back together in time to join the grid. The team said 'don't worry, it's a long race and it's better to make sure the bike is right' - when I got punted off into the gravel at the first corner I thought 'it's definitely going to be a long race'! But that incident actually kept me out of trouble in the early laps, I got to do a lot of laps on my own which helped me get into a good rhythm and get a good pace going."
That pace carried Chris swiftly to towards the front, helped by incidents and accidents ahead, but 'The Stalker' then faced a tough fight for victory with Pitt and Fabrizio - both of whom he finally broke with a few laps to go - but at what point did Walker think he'd won it?
"As I exited the last chicane for the last time!" he grinned. "The conditions mid-race were really treacherous. The lap times got slower mid-race, because the conditions were worse, but people were still trying to push. I think that's what won it for me really. At almost every corner there were yellow flags and by the halfway point it was so wet and muddy that you couldn't see who the fallen riders were. I stopped looking at them after that and purposely didn't look at my pit board for the first half of the race. I didn't want to see that I was still in 20th place or something! The first time I looked I was about sixth.
"I was really comfortably when I got up to second behind Andrew - he and Fabrizio did a mega job, they stayed on board and set a good pace up front - but when I saw that Fabrizio wasn't going away I thought I'll have to get past Andrew or I could end up off the rostrum. It was pretty tough from then on in. Andrew put a good pace in, he was riding really smooth and it was a lot harder when I was leading.
