Dan Cooper ended his 2016 International road racing season on a high on Saturday when he claimed a superb tenth place in Saturday’s 50th Macau Motorcycle Grand Prix. Making his fourth visit to the Far East venue, it was the 29-year old’s second top ten finish at the event whilst he also set a new personal best lap of the 3.8-mile circuit.
Riding the Dan Cooper Racing/CMS BMW S1000RR, the Stroud-based rider made a strong start to the event with the twelfth fastest time in Thursday’s free practice session rider and he then went three seconds quicker in the afternoon’s opening qualifying session with more and more grip being laid down on the Guia circuit.
With all riders battling the hot and humid conditions, Dan took a further 1.6s off his lap time in Friday morning’s second and final qualifying session and a time of 2m28.485s meant he qualified as the 14th fastest rider overall and on the fifth row of the grid for Saturday’s 12-lap race.
Overnight and morning rain meant that the track was damp for Saturday’s warm-up session but conditions were perfectly dry for the race which got underway just before 4pm and a superb start saw Dan immediately jump up the order into 11th place just behind four-times winner Stuart Easton but ahead of Isle of Man TT legend John McGuinness.
The 29-year old kept McGuinness on the factory Honda at bay until lap three when he dropped back to 12th and here he remained until the tenth lap. Circulating on his own for much of the race, Dan’s fourth lap of 2m28.688s was officially his personal best lap of the demanding circuit and when Glenn Irwin retired on the penultimate lap, it promoted him up the order to 11th.
This looked like it would be the end result but Gary Johnson, who was running in eighth place, retired on the final lap and Dan took the chequered flag in an excellent tenth place, his second best finish at Macau after claiming eighth at the 2014 event.
Dan Cooper: “Practice and qualifying went well and I was just building things up gradually as my injuries at the North West 200 meant I haven’t spent an awful lot of time on the BMW this year. My lap times in qualifying were really strong but it just shows how competitive the field was this year as I went comfortably quicker then ever before but was back in 14th on the grid!”
“The race itself was good and I managed to stay in front of John (McGuinness) for a good few laps before I hit a neutral going into the Lisboa corner and I had to go straight on. It lost me a place but, crucially, a lot of time and after that I spent the rest of the race pretty much on my own. It was quite uneventful really but it’s great to end the year strongly and with a top ten finish in a top quality Superbike field so a big thank you to the whole team and all my sponsors for making it possible.”
Dan now heads into the winter break before looking ahead to the 2017 International road racing season where he’ll again contest the Isle of Man TT, North West 200, Ulster Grand Prix and Macau Grand Prix road races.
Macau Motorcycle Grand Prix (12 laps)
1 Peter Hickman (BMW)
2 Michael Rutter (BMW)
3 Martin Jessopp (BMW)
4 Conor Cummins (Honda)
5 Horst Saiger (Kawasaki)
6 Stuart Easton (Racing BMW)
10 Dan Cooper (Dan Cooper Racing/CMS BMW)
Picture by Stephen Davison – Pacemaker Press International
