Moto Rapido Ducati’s substitute rider, John Hopkins made a solid start to his MCE British Superbike race weekend at the Brands Hatch GP circuit. The American, who’s standing in for the crocked Jakub Smrz was the seventh fastest rider during the free practice sessions, and for boss Steve Moore everything is going to plan.
The team wanted to start off with a steady pace, for Hopkins to get a feel for the Panigale, but he wanted to push on and lapped a 1’26.575 in FP2 - only four tenths off the leading time set by Tyco BMW’s Michael Laverty.
Moore and his crew were unsure how Hopkins, or Hopper as he’s more commonly known, would fair on a bike that he has never really ridden properly before. But the ‘lottery’ paid off and the Moto Rapido team were surprised by just how similar the riding styles are between the Ducati rider’s, which has helped in the set-up of the bike today.
“We are pretty happy with day one - we started off nice and steady and John hasn’t ridden for a few months and we didn’t want John doing a thousand laps on day one as tempting as it is,” said Moore, speaking to bikesportnews.com, at the circuit.
“There’s been a really good structure today and everything went to plan. He wanted to push and to put a fast lap in - and he did, and seventh in this company is not easy to do and is really quite hard.
“It was a bit of a lottery really - as there is no bike out there that is similar to it and he didn’t have any comparison to make. He hasn’t ridden a two cylinder bike before and hasn’t ridden this style of chassis before.
“He’s very aggressive on the throttle and on the brakes and that seems to suit this bike really well. He has a similar riding style to Kuba and that has really helped and we are quite pleasantly surprised by that - and everything went well today.”
