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Both Kiwi, Simon Crafar and his team mate Steve Plater won the hearts of the crowd and the plaudits of their peers with a brace of brilliant rides apiece at Snetterton, Norfolk today.
After a disappointing qualifying session that saw both riders slip down the grid order to positions way below the times they had been achieving all weekend, the pair knew that they had a big job ahead of them.
In changing weather conditions that proved to be impossible to predict from one minute to the next the duo set off in the first race. The race had to be restarted after a fall early on, with the grid being reformed as the original qualifying times Steve and Simon both had all the good work to do all over again.
Straight away Plater made a lightening-quick get away, running through the pack to quickly peg the leaders down, picking off a host of factory stars en route to a fantastically frantic third place with Simon scoring his second best result of the year so far – bringing home a strong sixth.
Conditions worsened for the second race, with the swirling winds and threat of heavy rain in the air the race began, only to last two laps before being stopped because of another bike’s blown engine.
With both riders and team keeping their composure the fourth start of the day for the Superbikes got underway, again Steve and Simon were in the thick of the action, mixing it up with the other factory stars.
Simon kept scrapping and managed to fight his way through a tough fight for a fine seventh place while Steve was enjoying a frenetic tussle with Michael Rutter, the pair chasing down Steve Hislop in the dying stages of the race.
As the trio came into the final chicane for the final time Steve was poised to mug his pair of rivals: ‘I was fully expecting the pair of them to get caught up with each other because the turn is so tight through there. When I could see that they weren’t going to bash fairings I had to get on the brakes hard to avoid a collision. Because I was braking so hard the back wheel lifted and came round, the force of it landing forced my foot off the peg and I lost a bit of drive coming out of the final turn.
‘It was a good race but after the first one I really wanted to get on the podium again. We came close though!’
And how! Steve and Rutter were separated by just 0.004s – less than the width of the front tyre.
Simon said: ‘In the second race I was on a different line to try and avoid some oil on the track. I was caught up in a fight with the other guys and found myself having to take avoiding action to get away from the oil.
‘It meant I had to brake harder and later than I would have done, by the time I recovered I’d lost the slipstream on the other guys. Once that happens here you lose touch with them and it becomes impossible to peg it back.’
Result race one:
Winner: Sean Emmett, Ducati, 2 John Reynolds, Suzuki, 3 Steve Plater Yamaha, 4 Steve Hislop, Ducati, 5 Paul Brown, Ducati, 6 Simon Crafar, Yamaha, 7 Givanni Bussei, Suzuki, 8 Dean Ellison, Ducati, 9 Dean Thomas, Ducati, 10 Adrian Coates, Suzuki, 11 Mark Burr, Kawasaki, 12 Jamie Robinson, Honda, 13 Shane Norval, Yamaha
Race two result:
Winner: Sean Emmett, Ducati, 2 Steve Hislop, Ducati, 3 Michael Rutter, Ducati, 4 Steve Plater, Team Virgin Mobile Aiwa powered by Yamaha, 5 Shane Byrne, Ducati, 6 Paul Brown, Ducati, 7 Simon Crafar, Yamaha, 8 Glen Richards, Kawasaki, 9 Dean Ellison, Ducati, 10 Paul Jones, Yamaha, 11 Giovanni Bussei, Suzuki, 12 Adrian Coates, Suzuki, 13 Shane Norval, Yamaha
Championship points after five rounds:
Hislop 189, Emmett 172, Rutter 130.5, Plater 117, Reynolds 105.5, Brown 104.5, Byrne 99.5, Crafar 71, Ellison 51.5, Richards 50.5, Thomas 42.
