13/14/15th June Snetterton The British Superbikes made their annual visit to the local circuit of Snetterton for round 5 of the Championship this month. The 1.95 mile former airfield circuit famous for its long back straight was a welcome change for Team Sennett as it was less than an hour away from home.
The first free practice session took place on Friday afternoon and Andrew posted a time that was 8th quickest and was looking forward to the first of his 2 qualifying sessions that was to take place later that afternoon. The weather was changeable and the threat of rain was ever present with showers happening without any warning.
With 57 riders challenging for the 40 grid positions it was obvious that a good lap was going to be difficult and Andrew was unfortunate that he could not get a clear lap in. Despite this he posted a time of 1.11.88 which was a position of 25th in this outing.
Andrew made some small changes to the R6 Yamaha overnight and was ready to try and improve his final grid position in the second qualifying outing which was to be held on Saturday. The second qualifying was held just after lunch and was luckily held in dry conditions. Andrew improved his time in this session and moved up the order to finish in 21st place which gave him a combined position of 22nd on the grid for the race on Sunday.
Andrews’s position of 22nd was only 1.3 seconds off the pole position time such is the extremely competitive nature of the 600 Superstock class. Andrew had only one more opportunity to fine tune the machine before the race and this was the 10 minute warm-up session that was held on Sunday morning. He used this session to improve even further on his time although the grid position was already set.
Sunday’s weather was forecast to be wet later in the day so it was fortunate that Andrews race was the second of the day and was held in dry but with threatening skies. From 22nd on the grid Andrew knew he needed a good start to be able to get away with the front group but this was not to be. He was baulked on the run in to the first corner and lost some ground. He managed to maintain his qualifying lap time pace but was unable to bridge the gap up to the front runners as everyone in the field was only separated but fractions of a second.
Andrew was making progress but the race was halted prematurely by a red flag incident and he was classified in 27th position at the chequered flag.
The Team now has a 6 week break before the next round which will be held at Oulton Park in Cheshire on July 18th/19th.
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