Luckless Samsung at Donington Park.

The Samsung Suzuki Superbike team had an extremely unlucky weekend at Donington Park for round twelve of the Bennetts British Superbike Championship. Three engine blow ups during the weekend left the team with one bike for race day, which also blew an engine once the racing began!

Team manager Enzo Diclementi said, “I can’t believe the bad luck we have had this weekend. It is so unusual for something like this to happen. We don’t usually suffer engine failures so to have this many in one weekend is just incredible.” 

Earlier in the weekend both Sean Emmett and Dean Thomas were running well up the order during Friday’s free practice for the Superbike class. It all started to go astray on Saturday when Emmett blew an engine in free practice and another in qualifying. The NB Racing team were good enough to lend Samsung one of their engines which lasted all of four laps before it went too.

This left the two riders with one bike on which to qualify giving them just 15mins each to try and get a time in. With three engines out of action the team had one bike on which to race. The decision was made to allow Thomas to take the bike out in race one however that was short lived as the final engine gave up on lap six forcing Thomas to retire. Both riders had to sit out race two.

Commenting on their odd weekend Thomas said, “It is so unusual it doesn’t make any sense. The guys have looked at it and been through all the data and tried to work out what is wrong but for some reason all we can think of is an oil starvation. Must be to do with it being on its side for a long periods of time, we did have a problem with one other race track where we knew we had to run a little bit more oil but we weren’t told to do so here so that might be the case. The engines are being sent off to be rebuilt to get them up and running and ready for Brands.”

The final round of the Championship takes place on the 12th – 14th at Brands Hatch on the Indy circuit where the Samsung team are hoping for better luck and some good results to finish the season off on a high.