My Pirelli National Supertock 600 Championship weekend at Donington Park WSBK round, by Andrew Fisher.

Well here we are just after round three of the National Superstock 600 championship at Donington Park, we went into Free Practice on Friday with a brand new engine (the last one blew up at Oulton Park) so the opening session for me, was to run in the new engine and make sure everything was okay with the bike. I returned to the pits after the first ten minutes of the session to check for any oil leaks and make some adjustments. I then returned to the circuit and was told to go faster, but had to come back to the pits again soon as my bike would not handle the way I wanted at all. After making some more changes the bike improved but I could not get it to turn the way I wanted so we headed back to the van to think about what to do next.

For Qualifying 1 on Saturday it was all change as the heavens had opened and it had been raining most of the night before, so we had a wet track for qualifying! After making steady progress throughout the session, again making a lot of changes we ended the session in P34, but made it back without any crashes like a lot of people in the slippery conditions.

For Qualifying 2 it was raining much harder so I knew it wasn’t likely people would be going any faster, so we tried some new settings with the bike to see what they would be like to try and get a better feeling with the bike and I ended up improving in position in that session and moving up to 28^th. 

Overall I was reasonably happy with the progress we had made, with some more slightly bigger changes in mind to help improve even more for the race, which looked likely to be wet again!

So, for the race, wet conditions but the sun was starting to shine…hmm. I was starting in 36^th position (as two people who had had crashes in Q1 had gone faster than me in Q2). The race got underway with everybody starting on wets, I went from 36^th place to 28^th in the opening lap making a lot of overtakes, and then up to 27^th at the end of the second lap, but there was already a big gap to the next group, which I just couldn’t make up. Then a couple of laps later Levi Day made a pass which made me run a little bit wide which then let another two people past, I then tried to make an outbraking manoeuvre and we ended up coming together (doh) resulting in me running off the circuit and the other rider falling off. 

This then let another 4 riders past!!! So we ended up in a massive battle with lots of overtaking, some great fun racing and I ended up in 30^th at the end of the race!

All in all I learnt a lot over the weekend, we have three weeks until the next one at Snetterton and I really can’t wait!

Andrew Fisher #91