Change of Direction for Snetterton Superstock 600

After a few weeks away from racing to decide what the rest of 2017 would hold, we made a very late decision to run as a privateer on a Kawasaki zx6r prepared by NPmotorcycles in the SuperStock 600 British Superbike support class.

Daniel with Dad (Kevin) on the start line at Snetterton

With only a few days to prepare, crew chief Neil Pearson had many late nights building a new bike which had never seen a race track before.

Fortunately, there are many people surrounding us that are always there to support my racing career and this weekend would be a test of ability and determination for a small but very able team. Both free practice 1 and 2 would provide valuable time to iron out any issues with the untested bike - which they did, with each outing on the bike allowing Neil and his able assistant (Dad) to identify and resolve and emerging issues with the bike.

After each session including Sunday morning warm up Neil was carefully adjusting the setup, as much of the practice time had to be used preparing the bike to be race fit.

My lap times were improving but my starting position on the grid would be 29th, so the best I could hope for was a good start. Two corners into the race there was a collision in front of me which I was unable to avoid, so I joined a three bike incident which pushed me back to 32nd position with my first lap of the race ending up 12.5 seconds slower than my qualifying time

The bike had taken a good hit and I was uncertain of the potential damage to the front wheel, so I didn't push too hard for the next lap, but I needed to reclaim lost positions and I began claw back with an average a new position each lap.

By lap nine I was running a personal best with 1:57 which were my fastest laps of the weekend, giving an 8 second a lap improvement on my first practice session.

There would be no points for me this weekend, but we did produce a bike which feels really good and will certainly be competitive

Thank you very much all of my personal sponsors and to Moto Breakers Racing for their support, and to Neil for working hard to prepare a bike for this round

Next Round - Brands Hatch GP 21st - 23rd July