Mondello Park – British Supersport Cup
Dan Cooper – # 20
As we went out for our first session of the weekend, the weather was not very good and the track was very wet. This meant that the session was going to be my first one in wet conditions on a 600, so it was going to be hard. I ended up finishing in 15th after the 40 minutes. I was pleased with this and was looking forward to the second session. The track was once again wet and the rain was falling for the second session, I was pleased in a way because it gave me more time to get used to riding in the rain. After the session I ended up sixth which I was really pleased with and was now looking forward to qualifying on Saturday.
When I woke up Saturday morning I saw that it was raining once again and was quite excited about this prospect as I felt comfortable on Friday. As we went out for our session the track started to dry and by the end of the session there was a dry line. I struggled to get the bikes suspension set up for these conditions and ended up provisionally qualifying in 23rd, which I was not happy with at all.
For the second qualifying session the track was the wettest it had been all weekend and I thought that in the session I wasn’t going to be able to improve on my qualifying position from the first session because the track conditions wouldn’t allow me to. I thought wrong, because I managed to go nearly two seconds faster, which meant I was fastest in the second qualifying session. That happen with only riding for the last 15 minutes of the session because Westy used my bike for the first half of the session, this time moved me up to moved up to 17th on the grid. I was fairly pleased with the days work and looking forward to the race.
Morning warm up was first session that we had all weekend where the track was completely dry, so it turned out to be more than just a warm up. I knew that I had to push hard in this session so we had a good setting for the race. I ended up finishing in 23rd after the 20 min warm up which didn’t worry me and I was looking forward to racing.
As the lights went out I got a really good start and ended the first lap in 10th place, after the halfway point a few riders had come back past me and I was in 15th when the race got stopped.
In the restart I got another good start and was in 12th after the first lap and was racing against some good and experienced riders. With about four laps to go I had a big slide coming out of the corner onto the back straight and a couple of riders came past me. I then couldn’t get back past them and ended up finishing the race in 15th position. I was fairly pleased with the result and the weekend as we always knew it was going to be a tough weekend.
My deepest sympathy goes out to all of Guys family and the Gearlink Kawasaki Team at such a sad time.
R.I.P Guy, gone but never forgotten.
Thanks
Dan #20
