Brendan Roberts

 

Brendan Roberts left Brands Hatch at the weekend as joint Championship leader in the Superstock 1000 FIM Cup, after finishing in fourth place at the British round of the Championship. He is now equal in the series with Brands Hatch winner Max Berger. Roberts riding the 1098R for the Ducati Xerox Junior Team had to fight hard to secure fourth place after dropping back to ninth position at half distance.

Roberts was riding strong throughout the weekend and qualified in third position on the grid for the 14-lap race. Despite racing at the circuit since he came to the UK in 2005, Roberts has never had great results at the Kent track and was looking at breaking that tradition at the weekend. Only scoring one podium there, this was in 2006 with a third place.

As rain hit the circuit on Sunday morning, the young Australian was second in the wet morning warm up and looking good for a strong result. With the conditions changing and the Superstock race being the first on the timetable the track was part wet and part dry, forcing Roberts to choose a dry rear and intermediate front tyre, a gamble which only worked in the closing stages of the race.

A good start saw Roberts in a strong position but that soon came to an end as he was struggling for grip on the damp parts of the circuit. Falling down to ninth place by lap six he had a lot of work to do to ensure he kept his Championship hopes alive. Working his way back through the pack he took a comfortable fourth place at the end of the race and setting his fastest lap times of the race in the closing stages.

Roberts commented “It was a tough weekend and things were running well at the start but it all seemed to go wrong on race day. Typical British weather caused a frantic decision just before the race started and it was a gamble on what tyres we used. Brands has always been an interesting circuit for me and I’ve never got the results there that I’d hope for, but the next round is at Donington, which is one of my favourites so hopefully I can get a good result there. I would like to send my condolences to the family and friends of Craig Jones, from the times I met him around the paddock he always had nice things to say and was a good guy. I’m sorry his life has been cut so short and I’m thinking of them all at this sad time.”

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 6th, 2008 at 8:55 pm and is filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.