Race Report...

Qualifying
With the off-road being wet in the morning, the organisers opened the off-road for the first time in the qualifying session. Having ridden the previous day I had worked very hard with my mechanic to find a good setting for the weekends racing but also for the year ahead and I think we got pretty close. I was quickest in practice and enjoyed the off-road sestion when they opened it for the qualifying session and there was 1 berm that was perfect. In 5 years of racing Supermoto I have never ridden anything like it. The ground was still slightly tacky and it gave unbelieveble grip, almost like being on a motocross bike. The Italian championship has every single top rider in it so it's always a good way to tell what kind of pace you are running so I was really happy to take the pole position by 3 tenths.
Finished: 1st

Race 1

Having been fastest in morning warm up on a very used tyre I knew we had a good set up for full race distance. I got a pretty rubbish start but still managed to slot into 2nd behind the reigning S1 World Champ Adrien Chareyre. I could see that together we were pulling a good gap so I didn't battle with him just so we could put in fast laps and get a gap on the rest of the field. As the race went on I felt really comfortable behind him (setting the fastest lap of the race too) and decided I wouldn't show my hand until the penultimate or even the last lap of the race. That plan backfired when, with only 3 laps to go I had a stupidly small crash on the now dusty off-road section. Thankfully I had enough of a gap to hold 2nd position in front of Davide Gozzini.
Finished: 2nd

Race 2

My start in the 2nd race was equally as pathetic as the first except this time I didn't get away with so well this time. I tipped in just on the outside of Pignotti we were very close as we rounded the corner. He didn't exactly do anything dangerous but I'm sure he was fully aware what would happen if he lifted, True enough he lifted up slightly and clipped my bars sending my on my backside down the track. I remounted dead last and tried really hard for the first few laps to pull as much in as I could but it was too late. I had lost too much time and was losing more still due to coming through all the traffic. For some reason I also had chronic chatter which wasn't there in race 1 and we had changed nothing. Still I was happy with our weekends work.

Finished: 8th