It was an eventful round for Moto Rapido Ducati at Brands Hatch. Below is the round up of the racing.

Superbike:

Taylor and the team decided to sit out of first practice due to the rain and the forecast for the remainder of the weekend supposedly being bright and sunny, seemed a shame to make the beautiful bike dirty and risk crashing for no gain in set-up.

Free Practice two was damp but we managed to get out on slicks, track temperature was a cold 10 degrees so lap times were down a little and nobody wanted to push too hard and go off line into the damp parts of the track on slick tyres.

A small tip off at Graham Hill Bend in the third session meant we lost 50% of our dry practice time before Qualifying that day, rider and bike were ok and the boys got the bike ready with plenty of time to spare to get composed before qualifying, Taylor seemed to have difficulty at the beginning due to our lack of dry practice but we treated the first part of the session as more set-up time and made it into Q2 and finishing in P16 ready for the race Sunday.

Race 1 we got a good start but after a couple of laps we held our original position, it’s pretty tough to pass people if nobody makes a mistake here at the Indy Circuit, the top 20 riders lap times are split by less than 1 second and a tenth is very hard to find in a 45 second lap. Needless to say we missed out on the vital point but had race two to t again.

Race 2 the weather took a turn and after lap 8 the race was stopped due to a brief downpour of rain……decision time by the team to put in a wet set-up with wet tyres. A quick restart from P20 on the grid meant Taylor had some work to do but He fought his way back to 15^th to claim another point for the team after some very scary moments in the wet conditions.

We had a little visit from Anne Robinson from the TV program ‘The Weakest Link’ pop by as she is doing a documentary on Grid girls which will be aired on the BBC in June so I will keep you in the loop about that, Taylor was a little excited and got her to say her catch phrase for him on the grid while she was holding his umbrella. Check out his Facebook page for the full video.

Moto3:

Thomas had the pressure on after winning at Donington in the British Talent Cup series two weeks ago. This was the first time since winter testing he has been able to get track time on his ‘Case Elecrical’ Moto3 bike.

The Nipper was consistent all weekend and managed to bag himself a 4th in race one and 5^th in the second race. This leaves him in 5^th place for the championship and 26 points behind the leader. With 8 more rounds to go we know Thomas can make up this gap.

Tri-Options Ducati Cup:

Levi Day had a disastrous weekend after an amazing first race at Donington, electrical issues saw him pull out of race 1 and subsequently start from the back of the grid in a wet race 2 where he eventually finished 17^th.

Josh Wainwright kept the Boast Plumbing team in high spirits by starting from the front row in both races and finishing 3^rd in race one then 2^nd in race two. This leaves him leading the championship by 6 points.

We are all looking forward to Oulton park in a couple of weeks after our official Bennetts BSB test there on the 26^th of April.

Report and images courtesy of Moto Rapido Ducati.