Emmanuel Clarke went in for practice on Wednesday, where they were busy trying a new setting on the bike. It worked wonders for them and Clarke went into the low 21's straight away. This is their best till date and the team was very happy. The next day, was another story with the team trying to do too much! A new chamber was tried and it back fired with broken piston.
Read about the rest of the Kawasaki Cup weekend, a heard from Clarke.
Qualifying: We managed to get our act together and we found the old setting which gave us the timing on Wednesday. I did a 1.20.847, which put me in 9th position with less than a second separating 4th-9th place!!! This class is getting more competitive by the minute.
Race 1: Headed into race 1 with not knowing what to expect with the bunch so closely packed together, but a poor start saw me drop to 10th on lap one. Managed to pick off the riders, one at a time to end up with 5th position on the last lap. But, I did not know that it was the last lap and made the mistake of leaving the door open into C1 and in came the two guys behind me making me run wide. I ended up in 7th place, but the positives I can take away are so much that I had a best lap timing of 1.20.717.
Race 2: With the grid decided on the results of race 1, I started from 7th position. I got a decent start and as I was looking to slot in for the first corner, I got caught out by two riders who crashed in front of me. I ran wide which allowed the pack behind to pass me and left me in 11th place. But, managed to string together some good consistent laps in the low 1.20's to finish 7th once again. In race 2 my best lap timing was 1.20.283 and this is the best I have done till date in the championship.
This resulted in an overall result of 6th, but that could have been 4th overall had I not made that mistake in the first race because overall position 4 to 6 was separated by just 2 points!
I must thank Barry Leong for all his hard work and efforts to make me into a better rider. All credit for these lap timings go him alone for changing my approach and thinking.
Emmauel Clarke is racing for Team Raceline and is currently sponsored by Dollar Apparel and Pagalam Trawells. He is currently in 8th position in the Kawasaki Cup championship
