TOP TWENTY FINISH FOR LANGFORD Silverstone 1000cc National Superstock 26/27-09-09
Sy Langford from Wickford riding the Gary Purkiss sponsored Yamaha R1 achieved his highest ever placing in the Metzeler National Superstock 1000 race held at The Silverstone International Circuit last weekend. This event is one of the support races to the prestigious mce Insurance sponsored British Superbike Series which is probably the premier national race series in the world.
The first qualifying session was completed without problems and he managed 26th position, but in second qualifying he was held back by a faulty clutch and could only manage 28th. This put him on the 7th row of the grid in 26th place, just under 3sec behind pole sitter and multi-TT winner John McGuinness, riding the Padgetts Honda.
A replacement clutch was fitted but on the pre-race warm up the problem was not fully rectified and with only limited time to carry out further work it was decided to race as it was.
As the lights went out there was the usual charge for the first bend and at the end of lap 1 he was in 19th position battling with the Sam Owens and Joe Burns. On the next lap Owens and Gavin Hunt managed to overtake and he held this position for two more laps before moving up a place into 20th. On lap 6 he passed Alex Gault only to be overtaken himself on the next lap by Burns, but held on to 20th for another three laps. On lap11 he was elevated to 19th place when Steve Brogan, second in the series made a mistake and crashed out leaving Langford to fend off the attentions of Darren Fry who was beginning to threaten his position. On the penultimate lap Fry made his move and with a slipping clutch Langford was unable to hold him back, and crossed the finishing line in 20th position.
"My best result of the season so far", said Sy "but I had some clutch problems in qualifying. We had a different clutch fitted, but this did not cure the problem totally and so the decision was made to take a chance and race anyway. I was not able to use all the power as the clutch would slip and I lost speed, if this had not happened I am sure that I could have held on to several more places and had an even higher finish. We believe we now know what caused the problem and intend to correct it before the next and last BSB meeting at Oulton Park on 10th and 11th of October. Thanks to Gary, all my mechanics and everyone that has helped me this season, hopefully I can improve on this performance at Oulton".
Report & Pix Eric O'Brien.
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