Testing weekend for CAME BPT Yamaha at Snetterton British Supersport

It was a testing weekend for the CAME BPT Yamaha team at round five of the Dickies British Supersport Championship at the Snetterton circuit. Joe Francis had a tough weekend scoring a ninth and 15th place respectively, his team-mate James Westmoreland was unlucky to crash out of race one and gained seventh place in the second race.It was a difficult day on Saturday for the CAME BPT Yamaha. The rain came down heavily just as the Dickies Supersport qualifying session started; Joe fortunately put in a fast lap early on and was able to qualify in second place for the Sprint race. James was unable to get a strong lap in the wet conditions and had to start from 10th. The race was cut to nine laps, James unfortunately got hit in the melee of the opening lap which knocked his brake lever out of line and he crashed out. Joe got a bad start and was locked in some tight battles in the opening laps but never really settled into a comfortable rhythm and he was only able to nurse his Yamaha home in ninth.For race two Joe started from seventh and James from 16th due to not completing a lap. Joe once again really struggled off the start and dropped back to 10th after the opening lap. Joe had a problem with his seat pad during the race, which saw him drop back to 19th place at one point; he carried on plugging away and was able to secure one vital Championship point in 15th place.Westy had a steady start and held his grid position after lap one, he knew he had to push hard to work his way through the field and gain some vital Championship points. He slowly worked his way through from 16th up to seventh over the 15 laps, he still has a narrow lead in the Championship by six points from Tarran Mackenzie. James Westmoreland - "I think all round it was a hard weekend for the entire CAME BPT Yamaha team at Snetterton. I have to say I think I'm glad to see the back of it and move on. We have a long season and this was a tough weekend. With the poor weather in qualifying I ended up in a bad grid position and was hit into turn one, which in turn shifted my brake lever. I went to brake at turn two and had no brakes so was forced to run on then it tipped over.Once again we had a lack of dry track time which really hindered our progress. It was always going to be hard in the main race today from the low grid position that I had. I had a couple of issues during the race which stopped me fighting for anything higher than seventh. It has been one of those weekends but luckily, I am still leading the Championship and we will be back at Thruxton much stronger, it's a track I really enjoy. A big thank you to the team and sponsors involved."Joe Francis - "It was a really tough weekend for us here at Snetterton. Despite all our efforts the results just didn't come. I just seemed to be plagued by bad luck this weekend and things didn't go to plan. I missed out on a lot of track time and had small problem after small problem.I tried my best in both races and the results don't show the effort that we all put in. I need to take the positives from the weekend, forget the negatives and move on to Thruxton where I hope we can turn things back round again."Grant Bunting - Team Manager - "This has been by far the toughest weekend to date but we got through it and are happy to moving onto Thruxton. We have had some testing moments all weekend and it just wasn't to be here at Snetterton. James still leads the Championship but the gap has been drastically cut down. We still have a lot of races left, a lot can happen in the next 14 races and we must get back to the form we showed earlier in the season and put this weekend behind us."


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