Isle of Man TT winner Johnson makes progress at Cadwell outing
Wednesday 29 August 2012
TT
Despite a difficult weekend, Isle of Man TT winner Gary Johnson believes he has made progress in the National Superstock 1000 Championship.
The Samsung Honda racer, from Broughton near Brigg, rode to a solid points finish in 10th place at Cadwell Park on Monday in round 10 of the championship, moving up the rider standings to 11th on 44 points.
He began his campaign from the head of the fourth row and made a good start in tricky conditions. A shower of rain just prior to the race start caused the organisers to halt proceedings and declare a wet race.
The riders were given two warm up laps to check out the track conditions and the race distance was reduced from 16 to 14 laps.
At the end of lap one Johnson was up to 8th and two laps later he moved forward into 5th.
However, as the track began to dry Johnson dropped back to 7th and then was pushed to 8th when Howie Mainwaring took the advantage on lap 11.
On the final lap Johnson lost two more places and took the chequered flag in 10th.
Johnson said:
“It has been a difficult weekend in front of my local fans; however I feel we have made some progress.”
“We have a new direction we are going with a dry set up, but conditions changed just before the start of the race, so we had to go out on a compromised set up and struggled.”
Team Manager Havier Beltran added:
“For Gary it was great to see him back with the team and building on his previous performances.”
The next round of the championship is at Donington Park over the weekend of September 7-9, but Johnson may miss the race as he is the reserve rider for Honda TT Legends team in the Le Mans 24-hour race of the Endurance World Championship.