Round 8 of the British Superstock 1000 Championship was held at Thruxton over the weekend. Thruxton is the fastest circuit we race at in the UK with an average speed of 110mph. The fastest corner we take there is at 155mph (250km/h). It certainly takes some time getting your head in to gear to take these corners at this speed! Thruxton is also known as a very aggressive track on tires. It is important to work on tire wear through out the weekend to ensure you have some grip left nearing the end of the race.

Friday was comprised of 2 practice sessions. I felt comfortable on the bike from early on in the day, and we were working through some set up options on the bike to give us the best pace possible on worn tires. I finished the day in 5th place and happy with our lap times.

We made some very minor adjustments for Saturdays qualifying session as we were happy with the direction we had taken with the bike. Because we had done so many laps on the Friday, helping me learn the best way to ride this track on a 1000, we only had one rear tire to use in qualifying. Many of the riders had done a few less laps on Friday, leaving them with a half decent tire to go out initially on in qualifying, to then put a new rear tire in half way through the session. I improved my time from fridays practice but as many others did to, I finished qualifying in 11th position. Not where we had hoped to be on the grid, but we were very happy with out overall pace, knowing that after 10 laps, our times were looking very competitive.

Our race on Sunday was a 16 lapper. I felt my weak point from Snetterton was that my start and my first lap wasn’t as strong as it needs to be in this class. I had been working on my starts all weekend and I managed to get away well. I got up to 9th by the end of lap 1 and had managed to get away with the leading pack. My second lap was just as strong and was just off the back of the leading group. How ever I made a mistake on lap 3, pushing a little to hard into turn 1. By running slightly off line, I then had to carry to much lean angle to hit the apex. I got on the gas and unfortunately got into a huge slide, which quickly turned into a big high side, throwing me over the handle bars. For how big and fast the crash was, I was very lucky to walk away relatively unharmed, other than a few bangs and bruises. Not how we had hoped the day to go, as I believe we had the race pace to run in the top 5. But it’s a fine line when running at the pointy end, on a little mistake ending in a crash. I’m sorry to my team for going down in the race, but we have learnt a lot this weekend and I’m really looking forward to Cadwell Park in two weeks time.

A big thank you to AJN Steelstock, my major sponsor who make racing possible. I wouldn’t be doing this without their support and I am grateful that I have such an amazing company in my corner. Also a huge thanks to the entire IN Competition Aprilia team. I am learning so much from working with a whole group of knowledgeable people, to help me get the most out of my self, and the most out of the beautiful Aprilia RSV4.

Cheers,

Levi Day