Current Championship Position

 14th

Ben's Comments

"I had to miss Friday's free practice session due to having to sit an exam at University that unfortunately couldn't be resheduled. I wasn't too worried about this because I have raced at Snetterton many times over the past few years and know my way around there pretty well, so was confident that I could put in a quick time in first qualifying. What I wasn't prepared for was what actually happened in first qualifying! On the first lap out I knew we had a problem with the bike... it just would rev. I tried to run it round for a couple of laps to see if it would clear but nothing changed. This left me in last place and out of the race. We got the bike onto the dyno after the session and it was only making 120.8 bhp (about 45bhp down on what it should be) and was being starved of fuel. The team stripped the bike and checked everything but couldn't find any faults... rebuilding the fuel pump gave a slight increase in the power but it was still way off its best. We managed to mask the problem by adding more fuel on the power commander, which gave us around 155bhp but this was only a temporary solution which would allow me to get back out on track. In second qualifying I tried for a quick lap pretty early on as we knew that the bike would end up losing power the longer it was out on track, and I managed to put in a 1.10.768 secs lap... which was only 0.1 secs off of my fastest lap of the race last year... so I know I could have gone well if the bike had been ok. We tried a different gearing in warm-up and that didn't work. In the race I got a good start and was up to about 12th on the first lap, but spent the rest of the race trying to fend people off as the bike just kept losing power. Everytime someone got past me on the straights I couldn't attack them back... it was very frustrating. For once the rider was in good form but the bike let him down! The team now have a lot of work to do to make sure that the bike is sorted and ready for Knockhill."