Hi guys,
This weekend we raced the first round of the Mastercup series at Mugello. It was a great opportunity for me to race at this track again and especially to redeem myself after my last outing there ending on the gravel trap.
A beautiful few weeks of Tuscan sun of course decided to end on Saturday and we spent my two qualifying sessions trying to find a good set up in the rain. The few things we tried didn’t work as we were hoping, and we ended the day in 15th place out of 30 riders. To be honest I was just happy that I didn’t crash after the amount of ‘out-of-the-seat’ moments I had. It was pretty sketchy but I never stopped trying because it was important we got a good result this weekend. Overnight the team came up with a solution for the suspension settings we hoped would work for the 10 lap race on Sunday.
Starting from the fifth row I ended the first lap of the race in about 10th. I tried avoiding the chaos going around me and settle into my own rhythm. The set-up of the bike felt awesome and from here I had a great battle with 4 other riders, we were passing each other multiple times a lap. Eventually I made a gap from the group and was comfortably in 5th place on the last laps, then on the very last lap I started to catch 4th position so I pushed harder and did my fastest lap of the race. I caught him just in time to get in his slipstream and overtake him at the finish line to grab 4th place by 0.01 of a second! Everyone was really happy after such a great race. In fact my fastest lap of the race was only one tenth of a second slower than the fastest lap overall. Later I was called to the official’s office to pick up the trophy for 3rd place because first position had been disqualified after a technical check on his bike. Woohoo!
It was a fantastic result and I am so thankful for everyone who made this possible – Geoff and Gaye, WIL Sport Management, Technicamoto, X-Lite, NGK, Bikeservice tools, Suzuki NZ, RaceSupplies, Sidi. My next race is in one months’ time and will be much harder so I will be once again putting my head down and working hard for that.
All the best until then,
Avalon
