Milwaukee Yamaha’s James Ellison has labelled his MCE British Superbike weekend at Snetterton as ‘disappointing’, and feels that even though his team worked hard, the Cumbrian lad was not able to come away with a podium.
In the opening race Ellison was in a strong position as he aimed for a top three finish, but with some improvements still to be made he was determined to build on his fourth place before the second race.
Ellison was running third over the opening laps when the safety car was deployed for an incident and once the race resumed a problem with the wheel speed sensor caused him to drop down the order. A gritty performance saw him then climb back up from fifteenth to ninth over the closing laps to maintain his fourth place in the overall standings. The rider has showed over the weekend that he has the pace to compete with the other riders on the grid, and vows to come back stronger for the next round at Brands Hatch.
“Obviously been disappointing for me and we seem to have carried the one good race then one bad race over to another weekend! We have been building up gradually and getting faster all weekend and after the fourth in the first race I genuinely thought we had the pace to fight for the podium or perhaps even the win in the second one,” said Ellison.
“In race two I got up to third and then we had the safety car period as and I went for the gear and it wasn’t there. The sensor is a reference for everything and we made some real steps here with hard work and unfortunately that meant we couldn’t show our potential. I took a lap where I dropped down and tried to see if we could reset the problem somehow but then I had a bit of red mist and just went for whatever points I could get.
“I tried to make a move on Dan Linfoot on the final lap for eighth but I went wide; it was always worth a try. I am disappointed for the whole team as we showed we had the pace but couldn’t translate it to podiums. We took it on the chin and we will come back stronger. We still hold fourth in the standings and that is the most important thing.”
