Ireland’s Eugene Laverty is confident of a good performance at this weekend’s Donington Park World Supersport round despite only having a limited amount of dry track time at a Croft test session yesterday, and crashing in the wet after only three laps.
The 250GP star, who is deputising for Fabien Foret in the Yamaha squad, had only a handful of laps in the dry and is praying for good weather here tomorrow – and says he is having to unlearn everything about riding bikes because the differences between his Blusens Aprilia and the Yamaha R6 are vast.
"I use a lot of back brake through corners on the 250, and we don’t have any engine braking at all," said the Ulsterman. "I am really having to unlearn everything from the Aprilia and remember stuff from the 2005/2006 seasona I did on a Supersport bike.
"We didn’t get an awful lot of time yesterday, and I crashed on the third lap which is what I didn’t want to do at all, but it was OK. I didn’t really hurt myself and the bike wasn’t too badly damaged. We just need to have at least one good session in the dry and I think we will be sorted."
Laverty is hoping that his Donington ride, plus the next round at Vallelunga, will open some doors for him as 250GP racing is now just too expensive. "I would like to be here for a while. At least until the four-strokes replace 250s anyway."