The 7th round of the British Supersport Championships was held at the very fast Snetterton race track near Norwich in Norfolk. The circuit is an old airfield with two very long straights requiring bikes with good power delivery with top speeds of over 160 mph in our 600cc Supersport class. The practice day on Friday was warm and dry with the usual Snetterton gusting winds typical of this very flat and open track with few trees to provide wind breaks.
The day went smoothly allowing Jason and Pat to run in new engines and fine tune gearing and suspension settings with the two allocated 30 minute practice sessions.
Saturday our qualifying day conditions were similar to the previous day, but the first 30 minute qualifying session was stopped after only 10 minutes due to the track surface breaking up on the
racing line through the tight Russell's chicane. The organizers scratched their heads and decided to extend the painted white kerbing to stop the bikes running over this potentially dangerous spot. The effect of this was an hour and a half of the days schedule was lost. So we ended up having just one 30 minute qualifying session later in the day instead of are usual two.
The lap times from the initial 10 minutes on track were cancelled, a little frustrating as both Jason and Pat had put in their best lap times of the weekend and were well up the order. So the riders had to make it count with our one and only qualifying stint. Jason finished the session in a strong 12th place only 1.1 seconds off the fastest poll time set by the factory Came Yamaha rider James Westmoreland.
Pat achieved his lap time goal of breaking into the 1 minute 8 second bracket on his 16th out of 20 laps on track and finished in 21st position overall and 4th place in his cup championship. Race day on Sunday was again dry and still very windy, with our 20 lap race set to go at 3.50 in the afternoon.
Both Jason and Pat were feeling confident and looking forward to some good racing. Jason got a great start and was right up there with the leaders on the first lap in 9th position and then enjoyed some close battles and by lap 5 was up to 6th place in the race, the remaining 15 laps Jason fought hard with Billy McConnell on the other Came Factory supported Yamaha eventually getting the better of him on lap 17. Jason crossed the finishing line in a brilliant 6th position and first Yamaha home this excellent result leaves Jason currently in 10th place in the Championship.
Pat also had good drive off the start line but unfortunately was blocked into the first corner with a fair amount of fairing bashing going on, luckily all the 31 riders managed to stay on board. Pat came round on lap one in 24th position and realizing he had some work to do set about closing down and overtaking the riders in front of him, by lap 5 he was up to 17th place. Lady luck was with him as both Luke Mossey and Paul Jordan both retired with engine problems, this meant Pat was in a close battle with Max Hunt for the Cup class win. On the final lap of the race Pat attempted a pass on Hunt but ran wide and had to close the throttle but still managed to reach the finish in a great 2nd place with his 4th podium visit so far this year. Another 20 points in the bag now puts Pat's lead in the Cup Championship up to 9 points, still very close at the sharp
end. We now have a 3 week gap to the next round at Brands Hatch GP, both Jason and Pat consider this challenging track to be one of their favorites.
Roll on the weekend of the 8th of August. See you there.
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