NZSBK Rnd 2 - Teretonga

After a somewhat disappointing weekend at Timaru, we decided to have a good think about how we could turn things around at Invercargill. It was decided that we would enlist the help of suspension guru Kerry Dukie from Duckic performance.

So the first day of practice at Teretonga started with a complete overhaul of the Suzuki's front and rear suspension. Kerry had some ideas and things started to make a lot of sense!

Buoyed by a feeling of a fresh start, I went out on the track and immediately shattered my best lap from the previous year. The bike didn't feel foreign but we were essentially starting to set it up from scratch so we didn't get to try everything we wanted over the two days of testing we had. Eventually, we found a good base setting and I was feeling confident lapping almost at lap record pace.

Qualifying
For this session I put on some new tyres but didn't get the most out of them getting stuck in a bit of traffic, while pitting to check tyre wear during the session. Despite this I put in a decent time of 1:05.3 to put me second on the grid with Johnny posting a blistering 1:04.6 to put him on pole.


Race 1
I got a good start for this race but ended up second after the first turn. I was following Kirk Pritchard on a faster bike and I thought this would work to my advantage but instead he was just holding me up. I tried to make a couple of passes but his bike was too fast at all the important passing spots. My pit board was signalling that we were getting caught by the following Pro-Twin bikes and I knew that if I could get past Kirk then I could pull a gap to 3rd. Unfortunately this was my undoing and with a lap to go I hydraulically locked the forks under breaking nearly sending me off track, allowing Robbie Stokes and Nick Southerwood past. I was furious with the situation but thought I could get them back on a last lap push but I was again held up by an F3 bike and lost any opportunity.

I ended up finishing 5th in this race more than a little bit frustrated with the situation! Funnily enough, the previous year had been very similar except that after a frustrating Saturday we had a pretty good Sunday so this cheered me up a bit.

Race 2
The next day started damp and ended up being very wet. The first race was going to be fully wet so I was a bit worried about not having had much success on wet tyres lately. Fortunately with a new set of Pirelli wet tyres I quickly started gaining confidence. This was basically like a test session for me just getting some confidence back in the wet conditions and I ended up finishing a comfortable second in this race.

The weather closed in for the rest of the day and they had to call an early end to the meeting meaning that we didn't get a 3rd race. I wasn't too worried as our pit shelter was about a foot under water and I was soaked all the way through so it was nice to go and have a shower instead.