5:00pm Wednesday 25th July 2012
CHAZ DAVIES admitted he left World Superbike round nine with mixed feelings despite racking up his thirdbest points tally of the season at Brno.
Davies endured a painfully — literally and figuratively — slow start to his World Superbike career, seeing a broken wrist scupper his progress in the early rounds.
However, the mid-season has seen Davies turn it around with a first appearance on the podium at Aragon last time out with a third-place finish.
It is a measure of how far he has come that a 15-point haul, thanks largely to a sixth-place finish in race two, was cause for a muted response in the Czech Republic on Sunday.
But Davies insisted any wild celebrations would have been out of place after a weekend punctuated by bike frustrations.
“It was not a bad day but I wouldn’t say that we had a great day,” he said.
“I think we maybe had slightly higher expectations after qualifying that I would have had podium pace in the races but it was strange in the first race with it being mixed conditions.
“In the second race I was more confident in the fully dry conditions and it was a good race. I haven’t got too many complaints although I was struggling with grip from early on.
“From lap two or lap three I was struggling and I think we could have improved the setting really because we missed a full 45 minute session on Saturday and I think that hurt us a bit.
“I managed it for 15 laps and then in the last five laps everyone seemed to drop to my level of grip and then everybody else was going backwards while I stayed the same. In the end sixth isn’t a bad result. It’s definitely not quite what we were hoping for but I am reasonably happy, the guys did a great job and we’ll move on to Silverstone.”
And with the British weather notoriously fickle, Davies admitted his Brno adventure might just pay dividends as early as round 10 in Britain on August 5.
Race one in the Czech Republic was run in a mixture of wet and dry conditions — an experience that Davies didn’t enjoy at the time but insists could stand him in good stead in the future.
“The mix between wet and dry is something that I haven’t raced in for a long time and it seemed that I was always a lap behind the faster guys in terms of times,” he added.
“If I did a slightly quicker lap they would have just done a slightly quicker one themselves so I was always behind them.
“But I definitely learned some things in those conditions which I will hopefully use to my advantage in the future.”
Å British Eurosport is the Home of Bikes, showing all MotoGP, World Superbike and British Superbike races on Sky channels 410 and 411 and Virgin Media channels 521 and 525 as well as eurosportplayer.co.uk
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