Back To Business For Stapleford
After the best part of three months away from racing the season got back underway at the German circuit of Lausitzring.
The circuit is new to most of the field, having not been used in the calendar for a number of years, and after a successful summer test Stapleford was confident of a solid result this weekend.
A strong performance in Friday's free practice sessions confirmed this after ending the day in 9th an securing automatic qualification to Superpole 2.
Qualifying in 10th position Luke wasn't happy with some of the changes made to the bike and felt that the position could have been better, if he had a better feeling with the bike. Luke was still hopeful of a strong race result.
After getting bumped around at the start of the 19 lap race Luke found himself outside of the top ten and fighting hard in 13th. He got his head down and went to work, it wasn't long until he was battling to get back inside the top ten and was in a race long tussle with former team mate, Kyle Smith. The two would swap places at least seven times throughout the race. However, in the closing stages Luke's tires were starting to fade, and he had to settle for what looked to be a tenth place until the very final lap where Okubo would make a move relegating Luke to 11th. Stapleford now looks forward to leaning a new circuit of Magny Cours for round ten of the World Supersport series in just two weeks time.
Luke Stapleford: "We started the weekend off on a high finishing FP1 in 3rd and set about trying to find an improvement with the front of the bike, unfortunately I feel we ended up going in the wrong direction. The weekend then ended up being very difficult with a mistake from me in FP2 resulting in a crash which put us on the back foot and we just struggled to find the pace to fight for the podium as we'd expected. We'll take the positives and the lesson's we've learnt with the bike and move forward to Magny Cours which is another new circuit for us, but I'm certain we can collect some valuable points again and head towards the top10 in the championship which is our aim now for the end of the season."
