2011 Superbike World Championship

Round 10, Nurburgring, Germany

ATROCIOUS CONDITIONS ADD TO TROY’S MISERY

The second race today took part in atrocious conditions. After a dry first race, everybody was hoping for a dry second , but when the teams all lined up on the grid for race two, the heavens opened and heavy rain began to fall, rendering the track a combination of standing water and rivulets. Aquaplaning became the norm and it was no surprise when the race was red-flagged after fourteen laps. Troy splashed around to twelfth out thirteen finishers, which was better than his fifteenth in the dry first race.

Carlos Checa (Ducati) comfortably won race one, with Marco Melandri (Yamaha) second and Noriyuki Haga (Aprilia) third. Tom Sykes (Kawasaki) took the rain-affected race two, with Ducati team mates Sylvain Guintoli and Jakub Smrz second and third.

Troy - Race 1: 15th, Race 2: 12th

Well, it has not been a good weekend for sure. It didn’t start well on Friday and really it never got any better. We lost a lot of time on Friday and that affected the grid position because we were unable to get into Superpole. It’s a shame because my pace in Saturday afternoon’s free practice was pretty good.

Starting from the fifth row of the grid was never going to be good and matters weren’t helped in race one when I didn’t get a particularly good start. I found it difficult catching and passing anybody and then began losing grip after about six laps. The bike was spinning up too easily and, from then on, it was just a matter of trying to keep the bike upright and bringing it home, so not a great race for me.

We all lined up on the grid for race two on slicks, but it was pretty obvious that the rain was going to come, so the start was delayed ten minutes. Pretty soon the rain began and there was a lot of activity on the grid as everybody changed to full wet tyres. We softened up the bike a little and changed the preload to the wet set-up we tried in the morning warm-up. Even on the inspection lap, puddles were beginning to form and so we all took the first lap of the race pretty cautiously. I didn’t make a bad start, but maybe took it a bit too cautiously going into turn. It would’ve been so easy to crash there and take a load of other riders out, so I erred on the side of caution. I lost some time because of that, but soon had to concentrate hard to avoid crashing in the variable conditions. Some parts of the track had a lot of water on them and some not so much, so you had to keep your wits about you all the time. There were deep puddles everywhere and many, many rivulets running across the track. Down at the bottom hairpin, there was even some mud or sand washed down from the hill and we were also aquaplaning in many areas. Toseland came past me pretty hard and then had a big off and that made me a bit more cautious. I didn’t want to crash and bend or break the plate in my arm because that would’ve been a disaster. By half race distance, the conditions were pretty dangerous and a few of us riders put our hands up to get the race stopped. But no notice was taken until about four laps later, when the race was red-flagged.

If I had been in a different position in the championship and didn’t have a plate and screws in my arm, I might have gone a bit faster but, in my situation, there was no point. I am happy to have survived the afternoon, uninjured, and hope that conditions will be much better in the next round in Imola.

See ya,

Troy