Thomas pulls in points for Samsung
Dean Thomas and the Samsung Suzuki team had an interesting weekend at Snetterton for round five of the Bennetts British Superbike Championship. Thomas’ Superstock Ducati racing team-mate, Jon Kirkham has left the Samsung team on amicable terms in order to run his own Superstock effort. Kirkham will be replaced but as yet no rider has been selected for the job.
With Kirkham gone, Thomas had initially intended to run in Superbike and Superstock but a high side on the Ducati Superstock machine early in the weekend made him decide to concentrate on the Superbike class. He qualified in nineteenth place due to a technical problem during the session. Race one resulted in a DNF following an excursion into a field at the end of the front straight and race two yielded a points scoring finish in thirteenth place.
Thomas explained what happened in qualifying, “My number one bike had an oil leak and an engine problem of some kind. The black and orange flag came out for me to pull in and of course this happened as far away from the pits as possible!”
The Superbike class are subject to a new tyre rule this year where they are allowed to use just three tyres during qualifying and Thomas suffered the down side of that rule, “With the three tyre rule, which I’ve been caught with before, it was the same problem we had at Silverstone. We had to come back in and run another tyre which cut our qualifying tyres down to one. The second bike is just not as good as the number one machine so we just had a bad run,” he said.
Race one saw the affable Australian suffer a bad start which he was doing his best to make up for, “I was just trying to get back through the field and I had made up three of four places and I was gradually getting through. We had made some small changes to the bike for the race as we hadn’t found the setting we needed for this track so it was worth the gamble. We made a bit of a mistake and I just couldn’t stop, each time I went for the brakes the forks were bottoming out and I was running on. I slip streamed someone on the front straight and dived under them and I thought I had just made it but I went in too deep and I couldn’t stop! That was it I was straight off the end of the front straight, out passed the Armco, straight through all the fields and straight out the other end. I was pretty much stuck out there, took a while to get back. So that was the end of that one. By the time I had made it back, the rest of the field had actually done another lap.”
The second race was better and Thomas stayed on track to finish in the points, “Second race was better but I still had to make my way through the field a little bit but finished in thirteenth. I was fighting with the bunch for tenth so it wasn’t a bad result considering the hassle we’ve had this weekend with a few bits and pieces going wrong but we seem to be running in tenth or thirteenth for some reason. We need to make some changes and make the second bike up to speed and move on to Mondello and see what happens. The Samsung Superbike team are working well and they are putting the effort in.”
The Superbike Championship now has a three week break before heading to Mondello Park in the Republic of Ireland on the 15th – 17th June.
Picture: Dave Couldwell of Monopics