Manxman Gavin Hunt finished inside the points of the Pirelli National Superstock 1000cc Championship for the fourth meeting in a row when the Northern Escalator Kawasaki rider took a hard fought 15th place at Cadwell Park on Bank Holiday Monday.
Riding at the demanding Lincolnshire venue for the first time in four years, Hunt had a lot of work to do during practice and qualifying to ensure he was on the pace around the narrow, woodland circuit but he did just that and made steady progress throughout. 17th in the opening qualifying session, the 27-year old went six-tenths of a second quicker in the final session to move up to 15th and the fifth row of the grid. He was also only 0.4s adrift of eighth place.
A solid start to the 15-lap race saw Gavin move up a position at the end of the first lap and a lap later he was up to 13th place and part of a big group of riders battling for ninth position. However, on the sixth lap, Gavin slipped back to 15th place and there was now just two and half seconds separating a group of ten riders from ninth to 17th. Any hopes Gavin had of moving up the leaderboard in the final third of the race were dashed though when the race was stopped early on the tenth lap when Tom Tunstall crashed at the top of the Mountain.
Subsequently, Gavin was given 15th place which meant he picked up a solitary point and it now moves him on to a season’s total of 29 to remain in 12th overall in the Championship table.
Gavin Hunt: “It was my first time at Cadwell in four years and I was my own worst enemy as I kept making changes to the bike to try and improve it when I should have just got out there and ridden it. I went half a second quicker in second qualifying which moved me up a couple of places but I should have been higher as my ideal lap was a second quicker than what I actually did. If I’d have done that I’d have had a better start position than the fifth row.”
“I got a relatively decent start and was part of a group battling for ninth place all the way through the race but it just wasn’t the greatest of races for me. I missed a gear at Mansfield which allowed Jesse Trayler and Josh Day to get by and drop me back down to 15th and with the race being stopped early that’s where I ended up. If it had gone full race distance, I could have moved forward again but I had to accept 15th and a solitary point. It’s not the result I wanted but at least it was another point and kept me in 12th place overall in the Championship.”
The next round of the series takes place at Silverstone, alongside the MotoGP World Championship races, on August 29-31.
Picture by Glynne Lewis.
