Rob Guiver started from 19th position in Race 1 at Brands Hatch (6th April 2013) on the Ace Cafe Racer but managed to improve to 17th. The team were impressed with the result after minimal testing and more improvements still planned for the bike.
When asked about his race he felt he could do better with more time: “I had a couple of battles going on, I kept chopping and changing with people towards the end and if I’d had another five or six laps maybe I could have got in amongst them. I just ran out of time after having a bad start.”
It was a messy start to the race as William Dunlop, Deane Brown and Jason O’Harrell came off at at Druids. A red flag was issued due to oil on the track and the race was restarted with a full grid.
When the race began again the pack split, the front eight pulled away leaving the rest to fight it out. Stuart Easton, Billy McConnell and Alastair Seeley battled at the front for the win. Easton, from MarTrain Yamaha Racing, went on to take the race, a disappointing result for Glen Richards of Smiths Triumph who too a strong lead before the red flag but went on to finish fifth.
Although he felt his start wasn’t his best, Guiver was able to hold his position when the race started for the second time. After his success last year with the Triumph Triple Challenge it was uncomfortable for him to be so far back in the pack but he is positive about tomorrow’s race.
He told us: “Obviously I would have liked to get a bit further up the field but I wasn’t particularly prepared for the race. It would have been good to get a bit more testing in. We didn’t get a very good start to the race and I wasn’t aggressive enough when passing people but I think I managed to set quite a good lap time and will be starting from 13th tomorrow. I’m pretty happy with it, there’s a lot to change on the bike so it should be a much stronger race tomorrow.”
However disappointed Guiver was, Ace Cafe T3 Racing team manager Ricky Chadwick, was pleased with their start to the season:
“I thought Rob did really well as it was his first time racing the bike and even with the lack of testing that he’s done the lap times put him 12th overall so I’m very impressed. We’re making one or two changes before tomorrow, nothing major but we’re going to make him feel more comfortable on the bike.
“We’re looking forward to a good race tomorrow, as long as he can get off the line well we should be getting close to top ten.”
Guiver starts 12th on the grid for Race 2 of the Motorpoint British Supersport series tomorrow at 14.55.