Difficult Weekend for Roberts
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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