After a fantastic round last time out for Carl at Knockhill, he was hoping to replicate a similar performance this time out in round 5 of the Quattro Group British Supersport championship at Brands Hatch.
The round kicked off on Friday morning with the first of two practice sessions. Carl managed to complete 18 laps with his fastest lap coming on the 15th lap with a time of 1:32.186, placing him in 29th but just under 4 seconds off the leader.
After a break, Carl got his last free practice session underway. Having completed 16 laps, he managed to shave off just under half a second, placing him in 30th.
Carl’s qualifying bracket got underway on Saturday morning, where a mixture of not having long enough to get into his groove and struggling to get up to speed with others meant a 19th-place finish and posting a similar time to Friday’s sessions.
A 10-lap sprint race was first up for the scoring races on Saturday afternoon. Due to Carl’s qualifying time, he started 37th on the grid, but that didn’t seem to put Carl off. He got off to a lightning start, passing rider after rider, and he battled through the field to eventually get into 16th on the final lap and cross the line, passing an impressive 21 riders in only a 10-lap race. Even with this impressive run, Carl finished just 1 place outside of the scoring zone but took plenty of confidence into Sunday’s featured race.
The featured race was underway on Sunday, and with a strong race on Saturday, Carl was hopeful of recreating a similar type of performance this time out. Unfortunately for Carl, an issue on lap 7 caused him to retire from the race, meaning his weekend was over.
This is what Carl had to say on his weekend:
“Well, what can I say other than what a weekend that was. Starting from P10 in race 2, I knew when the rain started coming down I had a good chance of getting a top 5. I managed to get a great start getting up in the top 8 and fighting my way to P5 where I sat comfortably for a while in the race. Unfortunately, I was pushing too hard, as I could see I was catching P4 and crashed out. I will take all the positives from this weekend and forget the mistake I made. Gutted for the race to end like this but I’ll keep learning each weekend and carry this into Thruxton”.
Carl will be back out on the bike in 2 weeks’ time with a chance to make up for this weekend’s race as round 6 of the Quattro Group British Supersport championship takes place at Thruxton.