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Tough Scrapes At Rockingham
The usual flashes of brilliance that have become the hallmark of Team Virgin Mobile Aiwa powered by Yamaha were cut dramatically short at Rockingham circuit, Corby today with a plague of falls costing riders Steve Plater and New Zealander Simon Crafar valuable points.
After such a strong build-up to the weekend, with both riders easily riding at the top of their game so far this season – holding and then maintaining positions at the top of the timesheets, both races looked set to be a corker.
It was Steve who made the early showing in the first race, carving through the pack early on he made up a host of places to set his Yamaha R1 racebike up for a battle royal later on. Although the action with Steve was confined to the first lap of the race, he still managed to grab an astonishing six places back off the chasing pack – both Steve and the Yamaha looked to be in race-winning mode, the earlier pace he’d shown and the aggression that took him to a memorable second just seven days ago was apparent from the start.
It was while Steve was trying to make up more places, holding on to the back wheel of the leaders with some audacious moves around the back section of the track, that trouble struck.
The nature of the Rockingham circuit means that the left hand side of the tyres take longer to get to operating temperature than normal: ‘I just gave the bike a bit too much throttle in the final complex of turns on the first lap and the bike highsided me. ‘I was very keen to make up more time on the leaders. The tactic was working but for that split second where I got it wrong.
‘The fall was a big one, I had plenty of time to think that the landing was going to hurt.’
Although he fell right in the middle of the track the other motorcycles managed to avoid Steve as he scrambled to the safety of the track barrier. Fortunately, Steve was not badly hurt in the spill – heavily banging his right elbow in the fall he was able to control the swelling with ice packs between races. Simon scored a fine 11th place in the first race after suffering brake fade halfway through the 22 lapper. The Kiwi star was forced to run on at the tricky chicane and had to turn the bike round to rejoin the race.
The manouver cost Simon 20 seconds, but with his lap times being identical to the eventual winner of the race he was able to take some solice from the timesheets: ‘I felt good on the bike until the front brake lever came all the way back to the handlebar. I had no option but to take the escape road and try to get everything under control.’ The second race dawned with the possible threat of rain as dark clouds hovered overhead, again both riders made great starts – chasing down the leaders with a fine display of team riding. From lowly grid positions the pair were up to sixth and seventh places within a few laps, but the good fortune was about to run out.
The first to suffer was Steve who lost control of his R1 at turn three on lap ten: ‘I’d had a moment at the end of lap nine and it cost me some time. I was keen to get it back so I tried to catch up a bit in the next chicane but had a moment there. I ran into the next turn a bit too fast and had two options; abort the turn or go for it. ‘Aborting the turn would have gotten me a full ten second penalty which would have killed the race anyway, so I went for the turn. ‘I was too fast and the front wheel tucked under. I banged my left hand a bit as I fell but other than that I am fine. Very annoyed with myself though!’
Simon suffered a similar fate when he fell later on the same lap, luckily he was uninjured in the accident.
‘It’s not the way to end the day for us but these things can and do happen in racing,’ he said.
Championship points after seven rounds:
1 Steve Hislop 246,2 Sean Emmett 233, 3 Michael Rutter 212.5, 4 John Reynolds 153.5, 5 Steve Plater Yamaha 147, 6 Shane Byrne 141.5, 7 Paul Brown 126.5, 8 Simon Crafar Yamaha 94
