Croft chatter causes problems for Thomas.

Round ten of the Bennetts British Superbike Championship at Croft turned into a  frustrating event for Samsung Suzuki’s Dean Thomas who qualified in thirteenth place and finished race one in sixteenth and race two in twelfth.

The team struggled all weekend for set up as he explained following qualifying, “It is a bit too rigid, it is not soaking the bumps up and it is quite a bumpy circuit. We have gone forward, we qualified with a 21.3 and we are in unlucky thirteenth.”

Croft is a circuit Thomas has achieved results on in the past as he said, “I don’t mind the circuit, it does suit the way I ride and I’ve been on the front row a couple of times in the past which is probably why I’m a little bit more frustrated really. I know that I can do it but we don’t seem to be able to carry the turn speed that the front guys are running with. Their bikes are soaking the bumps up and ours is chattering across them and it is holding us back a bit. It is the best that we can do we are working hard, we are not first but we know that we are doing the best that we can do and so be it.” 

Race one wasn’t easy, “It was a bit of a struggle in the first one. We spent the last two days testing out our tyre allocation and we found a tyre that was ok. Dunlop gave us a different tyre that some of the guys were running, we tested it in morning warm-up. We had a bit of a clutch issue with the bike in warm-up so it was impossible to tell if it was helping or not. We decided to gamble it and try but it didn’t really work. Six laps and it started to taper off and we started to have trouble with it,” said Thomas.

The team decided to play it safe in race two going back to a proven base setting. “Second race we reverted back to what we knew and it was a much faster race for us. Much, much faster race, the lap times were a lot better. I struggled on the last six laps as it dropped off a little bit, it is not a tyre fault or anything it is a bike fault you know. The bike is wearing the tyres out quicker than it should, but at least with the tyre we are running in the second race it was a bit more durable,” he explained.

“It was a twelfth place finish which is where we normally are, we seem to qualify there and finish there. The Samsung guys are working hard and everybody is doing a good job, it is just so competitive. To finish in the top seven or eight is really hard work and we are doing the best we can,” he said.

With nothing to lose at Cadwell Park the team are planning some radical changes to set-up which might pay off. “There are a few things we are going to try for Cadwell which we have been considering for a little while but we haven’t had the chance to do it. At Cadwell we are going to set the second bike up completely different and go down that path and see if it works,” concluded Thomas.

Sean Emmett didn’t race the Samsung Ducati Superstock machine due to a shoulder injury sustained during a test session.

The eleventh round of Bennetts British Superbike Championship and the ninth round of the Metzeler National Superstock Championship is on the 25th -27th August at Cadwell Park in Lincolnshire. 

Images available on request.