Rob Guiver finished 18th today at Thruxton but 3rd in the cup class putting him on Supersport podium two weeks running. After coming off in the practice this morning and a collision in race one with Dean Hipwell, the outlook for race two was far from positive but Guiver managed to keep his mind on the race in hand and put himself in to a strong position.
Stuart Easton went on the win the race in the 14th lap due to a red flag caused by Nikki Coates coming off at Club. The race was far from easy for Easton as he was constantly trading places for the lead with both Ben Wilson and Alastair Seeley.
Guiver started at 23rd position off the grid and got away to a good start in the first lap but unfortunately dropped in to 26th by the end of the second lap.
Despite his problems in the previous race he managed to get a good line and rhythm going and gradually crept up the pack until the 9th lap where Guiver got caught up in a fight for 22nd with Simpson who forced him drop into 23rd.
Rob responded in the lap ten by overtaking both Simpson and Newstead to take 21st, the next few laps saw Rob climb to 20th by the 14th lap, and when Nikki Coates came off, Guiver jumped to 18th but the race was then red flagged.
Guiver had this to say after the race:
“Obviously having a crash this morning dented my confidence a bit, the changes we made to the bike were really good but it was just a matter of getting my confidence back. I was pretty happy with the bike and with the speed of it, we’ll just take the positives for Oulton really”
A difficult race for the team but manager Ricky Chadwick had this to say about Guiver and the weekend as a whole:
“He just struggled a little with his head today after he came off in morning warm up. It’s a bit of an unexplained crash really so he was worried about how the bike was going to perform on track. It’s a strange circuit here anyway, so there’s no data we can use from other circuits and there’s none that we can take away either. It’s not been a bad weekend, he’s still on the podium, it’s just not where we want to be.”
A three week break until the next meeting at Oulton park should give the team time to get some of the problems and kinks worked out, hopefully meaning a more successful next round.