It was a difficult weekend for Brendan Roberts and the Ducati Xerox Junior team at round two of the European FIM 1000 Cup Championship at Assen TT Circuit. After suffering a number of technical problems throughout the weekend on the Ducati 1098 R, Roberts crashed out of the race whilst in a dice for the lead.
After winning the opening round at Valencia a couple of weeks ago, Roberts and the team were in high spirits as they headed for the Dutch circuit and were eager to back up the race win that they secured. Sadly that was not to be the case; he only managed one full dry session without having bike gremlins, which caused issues during both qualifying sessions.
After altering the bike and changing all possible options he managed to get some decent time on track during the second qualifying session and took himself from 16th, gained in the first qualifying session, to fifth for the 13-lap race.
He gained a good start and held his position at the end of the opening lap. He was soon making progress through the pack and by lap three he was through to third, for a brief moment he got second but made a mistake forcing him wide across the dusty chicane putting him back to sixth. In a fight to try and regain his position he hit the throttle too hard too soon and high-sided and crashed out of the race on lap five.
A frustrated and sore Roberts commented “It was a nightmare weekend for me really from start to finish. We had a number of problems with the bike throughout the weekend and the mechanics couldn’t quite place the main problem and therefore they had to change as much as they could to try and solve it. As a result I didn’t get as much track time as I would have normally got and it put me on a little bit of a back foot. After my win the other week I was really keen to back that up with another good result and perhaps I was pushing that little bit too hard in the race. I had a brief lapse of concentration and that’s all it took, I was over the bars and sliding through the gravel trap. I was lucky as I knew the bike was near to me and thought it was going to collect me and cause me more injuries. I’ve got two very sore ankles, a damaged calf muscle and I also took a nasty knock to the wrist I broke last year. It’s certainly not ideal and not what I needed in the Championship, thankfully a lot of my main competitors also seemed to struggle in the race so I’m still lying in sixth in the Championship and there is still a long way to go. Hopefully things will be better for us in Monza in a couple of weeks time and I’ll be fully fit by then.”
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www.psp-bikesport.com Words Carly Rathmell
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