Gino Rea's Blog:

Nurburgring Curses Again...

Well, crashing out of a comfy 3rd place wasn’t exactly how I wanted to end the weekend at Nurburgring. It was such a disappointment it’s hard to put into words. There was a 4 week break between challenging for the podium (after running off circuit twice) at Silverstone to the Nurburgring raceweekend. I put in some solid weeks of training and was feeling the best I have all year. During the 4 weeks I didn’t get any opportunities to ride Motocross or any sort of bike so I couldn’t wait to get out on circuit.

We had a few small issues over the Friday and Saturday practices/ qualifyings but we qualified on the front row in 3rd position. Although, we feel if things went our way during that final qualifying, we could have had our first pole position. Nonetheless, I’m not known as a qualifier and was looking forward to getting my elbows out in the race after my best qualifying position of the year.

I got away to my ‘Speedy G’ start and led for the first couple laps. I had some small issues on the bike during the first few laps so I didn’t push hard to break away. James Ellison came past and then Davies too, I stuck behind but when Davies made a pass on Ellison for the lead, I made the pass too as I thought Davies might up the pace and break us. I stuck behind but ran a slight bit wide at a hairpin with Foret on my inside. I managed to hold the position but Davies slightly gapped us. Then I made another small mistake running wide at Dunlop hairpin due to my bike backing in too much, so Ellison went past. I tried to settle down a bit and follow James to see if we could catch Chaz back up and we did. My bike was just coming into its own as the fuel load went down and I set the best lap of the race, the first one into the 1min59′s. Us 3 leaders had gapped the rest and I closed right up to James who was right on the back of Chaz. Then with 6 laps to go it all fell to pieces. As I was changing direction from Turn 3 to Turn 4 I had the strangest crash, slamming me down onto my right side, the bike flipping as it hit the kurb then catching fire…

The crash was weird, it was not a highside caused by a rear slide and was not a low side from a front end slide. Instead, as I changed direction (aggressively as normal), the front wheel just unloaded and as I tried to chuck it into the right turn the wheel was crossed up and it just flicked me off. There was no warning and it happened very quickly. The annoying thing was that it was not a particular place I was struggling or pushing hard in. If I highsided out of a corner where I’m spinning or lost the front after backing it in, I could understand. But this was just changing direction, it was like I hit something. Then of course, to make things worse, the bike caught on fire and as they put it out with the fire extinguisher, I almost chocked as it all went in my helmet when I was walking away.

So my luck at Nurburgring hasn’t changed, last year I finished 2nd to Laverty and got disqualified because of politics; for an electronic part on the bike that most other teams also used.

Next up is Imola, the crazy circuit in the middle of a town. I’ve heard they have resurfaced it so that will be interesting to see.

Hope you enjoyed reading my second blog/ race report, hope to see you all at a race sometime!

Keep it flat out

Gino #4

@ginorea

BLOG END

The next World Supersport race will take place on the 25th Sept at Imola in Italy.