British Superbike News

Dan Cooper - MAP Centurion Triumph Team

Last weekend saw the second round of the Fuchs-Silkolene British Supersport Championship take place at the Thruxton circuit in Hampshire.

It was however, a tough outing for the MAP Centurion Triumph team with the rider Dan Cooper failing to make it to the grid after developing an electrical problem on his bike while his team-mate AJ Ventor struggled to finish in fourteenth place.

The pair worked hard throughout the weekend to find a suitable set up at the ultra fast and super bumpy Thruxton circuit. Working around problems and altering set up the two Supersport riders still encountered issues. Dan Cooper was unfortunate in the second qualifying and suffered a clutch problem which forced him to miss the entire session and putting him in a low 18^th place on the grid. Whilst AJ Venter was finding it hard to get to grips with the track and had some problems with the suspension and shock set up, this eventually put him in 16^th place on the grid.

Cooper managed to make the sighting lap but then suffered with a starter motor failure on the grid before the start of the warm up lap, which forced him out of the race before it even started. AJ got a reasonable start but only managed to gain one position at the end of the opening lap and despite his efforts to make progress through the field could only manage to get 14^th at the end of the race.

Cooper commented;

“I’m totally gutted about this weekend it just didn’t seem to want to work in my favour. It seems to be a track that I’ve never gelled with and for some reason that bad luck continued this weekend. I went out of pit lane fine for the sighting lap and then when it came to the warm up lap it wouldn’t go, just gutted. I hope things will be back to normal at Oulton and that I can get some good points there.”

AJ said;

“It’s not been a great weekend for me, I could not get the suspension right in any session and I just felt like I was riding on a pogo stick. We tried so much to try and work round it and make it better but nothing seemed to click and gel and I just can’t wait to get away from here and to Oulton in a few weeks. It’s definitely been a tough one for the team and we all just need to put this one behind us and move forwards with the rest of the season.”