It was another hard weekend for the Aye Gee Suzuki team in an action packed National Superstock 600 race at the new Snetterton 300 circuit. The race was red flagged on two separate occasions due to incidents and the final race only managed to cover three laps of the long 2.99-mile track. Josh Wainwright was forced out in the first part of the race with a sheared gear lever he managed to get out for the restart but the link arm on the gear linkage snapped again. His brother James is still trying to adjust to being back in competitive racing and managed to finish in 31st place.
Josh managed to qualify in 18th position only 2.3 seconds off pole setter Keith Farmer and was eager to get a good result on one of the only two Suzuki's in the field. Josh got boxed into the second corner off the start and this is where he may have caused the problem with the gear lever. The race continued and race red flagged on lap six, the restart was a five lap sprint flag to flag race, despite the teams' best efforts they were unable to fix the problem and that put a sudden end to his weekend.
He said "After the nightmare I had at Knockhill I was really hoping to come here and put it all behind me and get myself back on the point's board. Sadly it wasn't to be I got caught up in the melee because I was mid pack and everyone bunched together on the first lap it was a bit mental out there. I just want to get to Oulton Park, a track I like and get things back moving in the right direction. It is difficult being the only two Suzuki's out there as we have no data or feedback or anything to work against so it's all very new and a big learning curve for us. Hopefully we'll get things sorted for Oulton."
James Wainwright was once again thrown in at the deep-end having not raced at a professional level since 2007. Despite this he managed to start the race from 40th position and finish in a solid 31st place.
Commenting he said "I was drafted in to replace Adam (Lyon) at Knockhill and the team continued with me here at Snetterton. It's a real reality check coming back into such high level racing having not raced for so long. I'm really having a lot of fun though and enjoying my time on the bike again and slowly remembering what to do but these boys are super fast and I'm under no illusion at all about that. I struggle a bit during qualifying but enjoy the racing and managed to pick off a few places and in every session and the race my times kept coming down. I'll be back working down the gym hard when I'm home before Oulton Park."
