Round 11 - British Superstock 1000 Championship - Donington Park

Round 11 of the British Superstock 1000 Championship was held over the weekend at Donington Park. This weekend consisted of one 15 lap race on Sunday for our class.

Being early October, the weather has started to turn for the worst here in the UK. The temperature had dropped considerably from the previous few weeks, and the rain was starting to settle in. On Friday we had two practice sessions. Both sessions were dry enough for dry tires, but there were plenty of damp patches scattered around the track, away from the racing line, from the showers that had come and gone through out the day. We knew that we wouldn’t be able to really push for a lap time in these conditions, so we spent the sessions working through some set up options ahead of qualifying on Saturday.

Saturday turned out to be the nicest day out of the whole weekend. We only had our qualifying session on Saturday and I was feeling really good. It didn’t quite come together for us in qualifying how ever. We were just losing a bit of a grip around the fast flowing corners. We had solved some set up issues that we had discovered on Friday, but this had caused us to lose some grip on the rear. I could only manage 15th position on the grid. While this isn’t where I had hoped to be, I was 1.5 seconds off pole, but only 0.7 of a second off second place. The times were extremely tight and I felt that we really could make a much bigger impact in Sundays 15 lap race.

The weather turned for the worse on Saturday evening, and rained into the early hours of Sunday morning. Our warm up session was completely wet, but within a few hours, there was a dry line showing up. We went out on the grid for our race, and we made the call to run dry tires, front and rear. This seemed to be the choice of most of the front running riders, while there was a few opting to run a wet front tire and a dry rear. The risk was going to be, that while on the racing line it was relatively dry, anything off of that was still wet or at least damp. So over taking was going to be difficult as to pass people you would have to go onto the damp patches. Starting from the 5th row like I was, it was difficult to make any head way on the opening laps, while everyone was so bunched up. But as the race went on, I got into a really good rhythm and managed to start picking a few riders off. By half race distance I was inside the top 10 and closing down on the riders in front. I managed to get up to 7th with 3 laps to go, and was closing down on 6th place on the final lap. I couldn’t quite get close enough to make a move, crossing the line 0.1 of a second behind 6th place, taking 7th for the race.

I am really pleased with this result, after the difficulty we had in qualifying, it was good to make some good progress and back into the top 10 again. The conditions made it an extremely difficult race so it was great to bring home this result for the team and sponsors. 

A big thank you to IN Competition Aprilia for working so hard through out the weekend and giving me a great package to ride in the mixed conditions on Sunday. Also to my major sponsor, AJN Steelstock, whom without their support and belief in me, this season wouldn’t be possible.

We now only have 1 remaining round to finish the season off, at Brands Hatch in two weeks time. I’m really looking forward to getting back there and giving it my all to finish the season on a high!

 Photos: Cami Pix Photography