Current Championship Position

 2nd

Ben's Comments

"A great start to the season. I felt really confident going into the weekend, and although a few things went against me, I managed to pull out a great result. Free practice didn't quite go to plan - we tried some new rear suspension settings and we actually went the wrong way so I ended up lapping slower. In 1st Qualifying things went from bad to worse, and I only managed 2 laps as firstly my seat unit snapped on my out-lap and then one of my engine mounting bolts sheered in half on the third lap! Unfortunately that left me down in 39th position. 2nd Qualifying went a lot better after the team sorted the problems and although I had to finish the session early due to the bike overheating, I managed to post a time quick enough to qualify on the outside of the third row. When the lights went out at the start of the race I stuck to my plan of pushing hard round the outside into the first corner and although it was risky, the move paid off and I came out of it in second place! The race was actually pretty comfortable. I was just concentrating on my braking points and hitting all of the appexes. I had some early pressure from the guys behind but I quickly broke them and held a comfortable gap until the flag. I was lapping about the same as the leader, but he had already pulled a slight gap on me in the early laps so I just couldn't tag him back. I'm over the moon with second place and hope to be able to continue this form throughout the season. A lot of people were commenting on how fast my bike was across the finish line all weekend and a few of the guys were digging me about it being down to the power of the bike. After the race the scrutineers dynoed the top three machines and mine came out with the least power, infact I was giving away almost 15bhp to one of the bikes! So that proved that the speed was down to my riding and not just the bike... which was the icing on the cake as far as I was concerned. I'm now really looking forward to Thruxton next weekend."