Stobart Motorsport riders Michael Rutter and Michael Laverty emerged from round three of the Bennetts British Superbike Championship with some more solid points following on the first dry meeting of the 2006 season at Thruxton in Hampshire. In front of a record crowd and just prior to celebrating his 32nd birthday, Leicestershire rider Rutter scored a sixth and seventh place finish in both 22 lap races following on from problems encountered during qualifying and as a result goes into the next round at Oulton Park in joint seventh position in the Championship.
Meanwhile Michael Laverty also struggled during qualifying to get a race set up but bravely battled on to record a tenth and eleventh place finish to score valuable points and in doing so left Thruxton in ninth position in the Championship.
“Everything we tried didn’t work. We went back to the standard setting but we were 22 seconds off in the first race and 30 in the second so we haven’t done very well at all. We had a good set up at Donington and hopefully it is just the circuit here that just didn’t suit how the bike was set up” said Rutter.
Laverty added “I just had a nightmare weekend. Everything we tried, we just couldn’t make any improvement. I just couldn’t get anything to work and I rode around like a beginner. I just couldn’t ride it fast, I just had to ride it safely. I’m just frustrated but at least I got some points at the end of the day. Like Michael (Rutter), I believe it’s just the circuit because the bike worked well at Donington and Brands and Thruxton is a unique circuit.”
Meanwhile Crew Chief Phil Borley commented “We’ve learned a lot of lessons this weekend and we hope to be challenging a lot higher up the leaderboard at Oulton Park. We now have two weeks to re-group and turn things around before the next round.”
The next round of the Championship takes place at Oulton Park in two weeks’ time on Mayday Bank Holiday Monday (1st May).
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