Kenny Gilbertson of Astro Racing Kawasaki adds to his 2008 racing season challenge by running in the Daily Star Cup championship in addition to his usual entry within the Metzeler National Superstock 1000 category.
The Swindon rider joined the British Superbike grid at the seventh round at Oulton Park using his spare Superstock bike and he will continue to participate in both championships for the remainder of the season.
Gilbertson said: “For the Superbike we are using just my other Superstock bike, but with slick tyres.  We’re not running any modifications at all which is why we are running around in the last ten.”
“At Knockhill again we had a good run, in that I qualified 14th in the whole lot which we were happy with and second in the cup.  But at a track like it’s got more straights so it’s a bit harder with my horse power deficit.”
This season involves developing the new ZX-10 and basically both the rider and team are starting from scratch, hence the reason to join a second championship obtaining further track and testing time. 
He said: “We get far more time to set the bike up and it’s not costing us a lot more because we’re on my other Superstock bike so its just a case of tyres and fuel.  Its been a hard one for us to develop it as there are not many other people riding it so the extra track time since we’ve been getting it that we have come on leaps and bounds in development.”
“Hopefully by the last couple of rounds we will have 16.5” wheels and maybe a kit ECU.  It wont’ be anywhere near the superbikes, but it will be better.  With the current 17” rims we can’t have same tyre choice they’ve got, at moment we are restricted to one compound only, I can’t pick a tyre I have to go with what I’ve got.”
Regarding his continuing Superstock battle Gilberson said: “With the Championship it’s the worst luck I’ve ever had, we didn’t really finish any races earlier on.  Some of it was my fault and we had a few bike problems that shouldn’t have happened really, so we only scored points in the last few rounds really.”
“We’ve started getting the points in, I had a good round at Oulton and at Knockhill we had a third, so we are moving up in the championship.  I am just outside of the top ten if by the end of the year we could get the top seven or eight, somewhere around there we will be happy.  It’s a good come back from how we started out.”
Hoping to stay with his current sponsors Astro for next year and if budget allows the aim will be to contest the British Superbike Cup in full.  Gilberson said “Hopefully by next year if we run the same bike we will have a really good setup for all the tracks, we  will be on a level playing field from the word go.”