Isle of Man TT great John McGuinness was left counting the cost after a mistake at the Macau Grand Prix saw him drop from battling for a podium place to finishing seventh.
Riding for the Jezac SMT Honda team, the 19-times TT winner had been in fine form throughout practice and qualifying and was looking good for a podium place when he overshot Lisboa Corner and slipped down the order.
The week got off to the perfect start for McGuinness when he topped the timesheets in the first free practice session and he remained in the top spot after first qualifying, a time of 2m29.914s giving him an advantage of almost three quarters of a second over fellow Brit Martin Jessopp.
However, the session was curtailed after an incident which sadly claimed the life of popular Portuguese road racer Luis Carreira.
In Friday’s final qualifying McGuinness shaved 2 seconds off his time, but he was edged out of pole position by teammate Michael Rutter, who was 0.218s faster.
Hopes were high going into Saturday's 15-lap race, but it was only half a lap old when rain began to fall and the race was stopped. With conditions deemed too dangerous for racing, the race was rescheduled for Sunday and reduced to 10 laps.
A solid start to Sunday’s race saw McGuinness maintain a top four position. While Rutter edged away at the front, McGuinness was embroiled in a battle for second with Gary Johnson and Simon Andrews. Jessopp soon joined the trio and moved into second, with Andrews taking over third and as McGuinness tried to go with them, he misjudged his braking marker on the run into Lisboa Corner and had to take to the escape road.
Although he was able to rejoin the race, all hopes of a podium disappeared and he reluctantly had to settle for seventh place at the chequered flag.
McGuinness said:
“To be honest, after being fastest in free practice and then qualifying in second behind my Jezac SMT Honda teammate, I'm disappointed not to have made it on to the podium.”
“I was running at the front in all of the sessions and my pace was very strong, but I was keen to get by Gary and it was my own fault as I simply made a mistake and outbraked myself going into Lisboa.”
“I got going again, but had lost a lot of ground so just brought the bike home. I proved that I was competitive throughout the meeting though and both the bike and the team were fantastic throughout so a big thanks to them.”
He added:
“Obviously, the whole event was overshadowed by the death of Luis and it's a great loss to the sport and more so to all his friends and family so my thoughts and deepest condolences go out to them at this very sad time.”
McGuinness is among the Isle of Man TT stars who will be appearing at Motorcycle Live, which runs from November 24 to December 2 at Birmingham’s NEC.