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Steve Plater and Kiwi, Simon Crafar chalked up another milestone in the developing Virgin Mobile Aiwa Yamaha R1’s race life with a brilliant pair of performances at the weekend that unlocked even more of the potential within.
Both riders were in stunning form as they set personal best lap times and consistently lapped at the same pace as the eventual race winner.
Both races were a mixture of hard-fought close battles and long patches of attritional riding, but both Steve and Simon fired in consistently quick lap times that left the team and record crowd something that we have shown today and an achievement being recognised.’
Plater was flying on the Yamaha today, after admitting to making errors on his grid-determining Superpole lap yesterday the star knuckled down to racing and scythed his way through the pack from 14th place on the grid to a fine brace of sixth place finishes. An improvement that was not repeated by anybody else throughout the weekend.
Steve said: ‘I am very happy with our performances today. The lap times I managed throughout the second race were as fast as any set by the race leaders and winner and at this stage of the bike’s life that is a great achievement for us.
‘We bagged some good points here and proved how far we have come along already. This is a missile of a bike – and every time we go out on it things just keep on getting better.
‘My biggest problem was giving myself too much work to do, too much ground to make up after qualifying. If I’d managed to get a clean lap and not make a mistake in that I am confident I could have got on the podium again.’
Simon echoed the sentiment, saying: ‘Steve is right, the bike is an absolute missile. I am still not as settled at getting it into corners as much as Steve is at the moment but we are moving forward in most definitely the right direction.
‘Time on the bike is like unlocking chapters in its development and every chance we get we find more things out about the new Yamaha R1 which makes the whole job of improving a brand new machine better.’
Race one result:
Winner: Steve Hislop, Ducati, 2 John Reynolds, Suzuki, 3 Paul Brown, Ducati, 4 Sean Emmett, Ducati, 5 Shane Byrne, Ducati, 6 Steve Plater, Yamaha, 7 Michael Rutter, Ducati, 8 Karl Harris, Suzuki, 9 Simon Crafar, Yamaha, 10 Gary Mason, Honda
Race two result:
Winner: Steve Hislop, Ducati, 2 Sean Emmett, Ducati, 3 John Reynolds, Suzuki, 4 Michael Rutter, Ducati, 5 Paul Brown, Ducati, 6 Steve Plater, Yamaha, 7 Shane Byrne, Ducati, 8 Dean Thomas, Ducati, 9 Simon Crafar, Yamaha, 10 Gary Mason, Honda
Championship points after two rounds:
Hislop 95, Emmett 74, Reynolds 69, Steve Plater 46, Brown 46, Rutter 44, Byrne 31, Simon Crafar 29, Harris 18, Glen Richards 18
