Schleiz Round 6 IDM Championship

Schleiz street circiut was the setting for round 6 and due to it only being open to test once a year it was a good thing for the privateer teams! Unfortunatly yet another track that I needed to learn from scratch and due to its technicle nature and fast curved down hill section it was not easy to be fast from the get go. The very physically demanding track is actually a day to day regualr road for the local traffic that is set up like a race track it was very interesting.

Friday practise went well trying to find a good set up was also difficult due to the bumpy nature of the road track.

Our Saturday qualifying tyre plan was to run the race trye in the first session unfortunately the tyre choice was not the correct one which left myself dipping deep in to my box of sideways skills which are still limited on the superbike. I finished up in 20^th position which was very disappointing but we had one more session to put in 100%. The second session went better doing a lap time 1 second faster although the general trend was that it was a slower session with the rest of the field did not improve due to the temperature.

Race 1 I had an issue with the clutch off the start so i tried to make up as many positions as I could but get a little excited and made contact on the way into turn 2 sending me very wide, this was a very silly mistake that would cause the group ahead to break away. My lap to lap pace was similar but I could only manage 16^th position finish.

Race 2 We were unable to resolve the issue we were having with the clutch so again getting off the line was difficult and left me in a tough group that I could not break away from. Mid race one of the factory Yamaha riders was having a problem and held me up before he pulled in. I was at this point lapping consistently but not fast enough to make progress I then made a silly mistake with gear selection into the 2^nd last corner and lost a position to finish 19^th.

A very disappointing weekend that was also topped off by the worst blistering of my hands I have ever had which started on Friday but got worse and worse. The next track is Assen which is fantastic because we can test at this track so I can hit Friday feeling confident!