Riders Racing Ducati rider Martin Jessopp secured a confidence building seventh position in the British Supersport Championship at Thruxton circuit this weekend. The 21-year-old from Yeovil rode a strong race despite the fact that a stone had put a hole in the radiator in the early stages of the race causing the Ducati to overheat throughout the race, this also effected the power delivery of the bike and therefore he had to bring the 749 home in a good top ten position.
Despite the problem Jessopp made the most of his first ever-front row start in the Supersport class gaining a great start and was second into the first corner. He was pushed to third by Jamie Robinson and was holding off the chasing pack well until the hole caused the damage forcing Jessopp to fight for all he could.
It has been a mixed couple of weekends for the Riders Racing Team when Jessopp scored his first podium position last weekend at Brands Hatch but was later excluded due to the machine not starting parc ferme after the race. This problem was caused by a failure internally in the starter motor, a problem which the team have never experienced before.
Commenting he said “I’ve had a really mixed couple of weekends but glad to finally get on the points table in the Championship results. I had a couple of problems in the race, we were advised to run a slightly harder tyre compound and I just couldn’t get it to work right and I was struggling to get grip. I didn’t know about the radiator problem until after the race but I knew the bike was loosing power and was running at and exceptionally high temperature. I’m hoping Silverstone will be more encouraging and that we can improve on seventh place. Obviously I would have liked to have finished higher up and everything had been running well all weekend, we just had a couple of niggling problems on race day that we really could have done without.”
The next British Supersport race is at Silverstone Circuit on 27th – 29th April.
British Supersport Result: 1, M Laverty - Suzuki
2, J Robinson - Honda
3, B McConnell - Yamaha
4, J Westmoreland - Honda
5, S Easton - Kawasaki
6, I Hutchinson - Honda
7, M Jessopp - Riders Racing Ducati
8, D Cooper - Honda
9, J Kennedy - Honda
10, A Lowes - Honda
Photgraphs by Steve Eyton @ www.moto-photo.co.uk
Related Linkswww.jessopp.co.uk
