Motorcycles and news

Race day on Sunday proved to be sunny and dry and for the first time throughout the weekend the riders were allocated a half an hour slot to have a practice session and find a good set up for the bike. Jessopp suffered minor electrical problems on both the 749 Ducati’s during the practice sessions which, without having the practice and qualifying sessions as normal the team were unable to discover these problems earlier. He ended the dry session in 13th place.

This left the mechanics some work to do on both machines before the start of the 28-lap race a couple of hours later. Unable to test the bike Jessopp took the chance and took his place on the grid, running from overall Championship positions this put him in 12th position.

A difficult start saw Jessopp slip down the pack, having to swerve to miss an accident into Charlie’s chicane, taking the wide line he had to run down the grass on the run into Edwina’s. Crossing the line after the first lap in 22nd place the youngster from Yeovil had a lot of work to do to get back in the points at the tight twisty 1.4-mile circuit.

Working his way through the field Jessopp was on a mission and was passing riders every lap. Moving quickly and setting some steady and consistent lap times he was pushing hard and was soon into a points position. A last minute lunge saw him move up to 11th place as he crossed the line. Speaking with him he commented “It’s been a very strange weekend and I can’t say that I’ve been in a situation like that before. Due to the bad weather we hardly got any track time and when we did finally manage to get out we had a few problems which we had to try and rectify in a small space of time. I got involved in a first lap incident which put me at a fairly big disadvantage and I really had to work hard at the position that I got. It was once again another sad weekend and I would like to pass on my thoughts to the family of Ollie Bridewell who sadly lost his life in a crash on Friday.”