Friday free practice started off incident free, it was my first time on the bike in 8 weeks so I was keen to get some good laps in. As the bike had just been re-built from my last race incident I had to check to make sure things were all OK. I discovered a small oil leak, so we had to fix that, but everything else was OK. Fridays Practice finished OK and the rain stayed away too.

Saturday’s free practice was quite damp, the track was only mildly dry in a few places and as I as running dot race tyres (cut slicks) I had to be extremely careful. I was one of only 3 bikes to brave the weather conditions, and on retuning to the pit I was asked how the wet tyres performed, I pointed out the dry tyres still fitted,  and I think they were very surprised, I was even surprised at the grip available from the Pirelli tyres in the damp conditions. Saturday qualifying was a bit disappointing, the track was 90 % dry but I was not feeling comfortable with the bike set up, it seemed as if the front end as running wide and this did not make me feel good about riding fast. I did manage to set a reasonable time, but it was a lot more of an effort than normal.

Sundays first race started very well, I managed to get into the first corner relatively high up the order, and tried to stay focused on catching the guys in front.  The running wide problem I had in Qualifying was still not fixed so I was not able to push in the race, I made a few mistakes trying to keep with the leaders, this cost me time and 2 places.  T7 was still a bit wet and I could see I was much faster through here than the rider in front of me, I waited until the last lap to try and make a pass but I cut the corner too much and hit the white line, this caused the rear to slide out and I missed the opportunity.

I eventually finished 5^th in class with a place on the podium and a trophy, so it was a good result after a tough race.

Race 2 we made some changes to the bike to try and stop the under steer, I got off to another reasonable start; and I had a small lead of a few seconds over the guys behind after the 1^st lap.

The changes I had made seemed to be better as my lap times improved by over a second, but the problem was still there.  Again I made a mistake and 2 riders got past me, I tried to chase and re-gain the places but my left foot peg came loose and I had to slow my pace down as I could no longer put pressure on the peg in case it fell off completely.  I managed to finish in 6th place, no podium and no trophy, but a good weekend and still great fun.

Big thanks to the Team, Motul, Pirelli and Wurth for their help and support.

Simon's race report

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