Luke Jones got his first British Supersport podium of the season in Race 1 at Brands Hatch this weekend with the Ace Cafe T3 Racing team making for a great end to the season.
It was a great result for the team but also disappointing as Rob Guiver had to pull in on lap four due to an issue with his rear tyre. He got a great start to the race but started losing places once his tyre started spinning up. However he was still positive that today’s race hadn’t damaged his championship expectations:
“I was gutted with the result, things were going really well but then I just couldn’t stop the rear wheel spinning up! It’s good knowing that this hasn’t ruined my championship though and I’ll be trying my best for a good result in today’s race.”
Jones also got a great start to his race and managed to move up to third on lap one but Glen Richards then retook the position. It seemed that any podium aspirations were over as Jones was then passed by two more riders pushing him down to fifth position.
Jones began battling with Danny Buchan but had a moment, the leaders began pulling away from him and he found himself in seventh.
On lap eight he shot passed Glenn Irwin, putting him back up in sixth. Then on the final lap he passed Jason O’Halloran and Billy McConnell, crossing the line in third.
Luke told us: “It’s just so great to be back on the podium, I’ve had a bad year with Honda and I had a few problems when I was on the Suzuki but it’s so great to be on a Triumph again. The problem is I haven’t been so nervous in ages! Last year I was up the front quite a lot and I got used to it and then this year I’ve been qualifying outside the top ten and haven’t really been getting that nervous!”
We caught up with Team Manager Ricky Chadwick after the race and he told us:
“It was disappointing that Rob had to pull in, it seems we’ve got some sort of issue with the rear tyre spinning up and we’re going to look at the data to see what’s going on.
“It was great to see Luke come third though, it’s proof that he’s a great rider and he just needed the right machine under him.”
We also spoke to Team Principal Tony Scott who commented:
“I’m really disappointed for Rob because he didn’t go too badly in qualifying but we know he’s not a massive fan of the wet. We then had some issues with the rear tyre in that it was spinning up in a straight line, so that’s an issue we need to address, but there’s no need to look at that too deeply right now because we don’t know what the weather is going to be like in today’s race.
“The upside of course was Luke Jones performance, which quite frankly was stunning. To be on a 2011 bike that he’s managed to stick on the top step of the podium. You can only wonder if there had been a few more laps in that race what would have been the long term result.”
Guiver and Jones will be racing again at 13.30 today at Brands Hatch in the final British Supersport race of the season.