Round 7 - British Superstock 1000 Championship - Snetterton

Round 7 of the British Superstock 1000 was held over the weekend at Snetterton. It's is one of the longest circuit on the calendar which is built on an old airfield. This makes it quite flat and has a mix of tight and technical sections and fast flowing corners. In 2018 I got taken out on the second lap of practice, breaking my collarbone, so I hadn't raced here for two years. I love riding there and couldn't wait to get going for free practice on Friday. This weekend we only had the one race on Sunday, so we had practice Friday, leading into qualifying on Saturday.

We had two sessions on Friday, and we worked through a few different set up options, before qualifying on Saturday. We tried some different gearing set ups along with some suspension changes. I finished the day in 15th. We weren't to bothered about the position we had finished practice in, we knew that we had tried some things to help us build a better picture of how we wanted the bike for qualifying on Saturday.

We had qualifying at 12:45 on Saturday. 5 minutes before the session it started absolutely pouring down! The boys were working away getting the wet tires fitted, and a few bikes had already joined the track. Within 30 seconds the session was red flagged, as 3 bikes had gone down and one catching fire! Because of the delay, they put our session at the end of the day, at 6:15. Fortunately it dried up by this time and we had a normal session. I improved my times by over a second, ending the session in 11th. I was happy with our improvement and had closed the gap to the top 5, a big step forward from where we had started the weekend.

The sun was shining on race day and I was feeling really good leading into the race. We had a steady weekend of improvements up until that point and I was confident we could make further improvements in the race. I got off to an ok start, but only held my position on the opening two laps. I was 11th for these opening laps and did lose a little time to the front 6 or 7. I got into a really good rhythm though and managed to pick a rider off every few laps. By lap 9 I was up to 7th place and was still consistently doing the same lap times as at the start of the race. I tried to close in on Alex Olsen who was in 6th place, but I could only match his times, or chip in a few tenths per lap, not enough to catch him at the end of the race. I crossed the line 7th, which I am really happy with! From where we started the weekend to where we finished, was some solid steps forward in both the bike and in my riding. If I had made the first two laps stronger We may have been able to finish a little higher! But I feel like this was my strongest ride of the year so far.

We had over 30 guests from my major sponsor AJN Steelstock attend over the weekend, so it was really good to get this result with everyone their supporting me as well. I couldn't be racing with out their support and I couldn't be prouder to represent such a great company and group of people. I owe a huge thank you to everyone in the team at IN Competition Aprilia. Everyone puts in such a massive effort to give me a bike that is so great to ride. Thank you to all the sponsors and supporters. Can't wait to get to Thruxton in 2 weeks time!

Cheers,

Levi Day

Photos Credit: Cami PiX