2021 Round 3 - Superstock 1000 Brands Hatch

Round 3 of the British Superstock Championship was held at Brands Hatch over the weekend. We have had a pretty busy few weeks, we welcomed the birth of our second child, our beautiful daughter Darcie Day, who was bought into the world on the 18th of July. 5 days later and we were at Brands Hatch getting ready to ride the Powerslide Motorcycles/AJN Steelstock Suzuki. We hadn't tested the bike at Brands prior to the event, so at quite a few of the tracks, we are going into them with no prior knowledge of bike set up etc. Our first season on the Suzuki we are learning and improving each and every time on the bike.

We had two practice sessions on the Friday. We made quite a few changes throughout the day, building our knowledge on which directions we can go with the bike. I ended the day P14, 0.9 of a second off the quickest time for the day. Saturday we woke up and it had rained throughout the night, and our qualifying was at 10:25. The track was damp but drying throughout our session. We had an issue with our exhaust pipe only a few minutes in, so my team did an amazing job getting a completely new exhaust system fitted and getting me out with 5 minutes to spare in the session. Bear in mind that of course the exhaust they had to take off was red hot! I went out with 5 minutes to go in qualifying and I was down in 25th. We had wets on, and it was a damp but not fully wet track. It was very difficult to gauge the conditions and I only got 2 flying laps, but we managed to get back up to 11th position, which was a really strong end to the session considering the drama that had gone on in the middle of the session!

We lined up later Saturday afternoon for the first of our two 15 lap races over the weekend. I didn't get the best of starts, and the rest of my first lap was even worse! I crossed the line after the first lap down in 17th position. I had a really good feeling on the bike and we managed to battle well, coming through to finish 11th after the 15 lap race. I was pleased with this result, after the tough battling we had to do after getting beaten up on the first lap.

 

The grid for race two goes off the laptimes from race 1, which meant I would start from 13th on Sunday. I got a much better start on Sunday and a heaps stronger first lap, which saw me go from 13th to 11th, then to 9th on the second lap. I was feeling really good on the bike and I got up to 7th at half race distance. In the final stages of the race Tom Neave on the Factory Honda and Ex Superstock 1000 champion Keith Farmer got the better of me, but I crossed the finish line in 9th position. I felt that Sunday was a really strong race and I'm stoked with the result. On Saturday we finished 18 seconds off the win, and on Sunday we had closed that gap down to 9 seconds from the win, so it was a huge improvement for us in terms of race pace. I can't thank my crew enough for all their hard work over the weekend, we made plenty of changes to the bike and I really found some good confidence. 

Thank you to AJN Steelstock and Powerslide Motorcycles as this season wouldn't be possible without them! We now only have a few days break before we head to Thruxton this weekend for round 4! 

Cheers to everyone for the support!

And to our team sponsors and partners:

Cheers! Levi Day