Bruno -15-17 August
With the KTM RC250R Rookies Cup bikes having had a mid- season top end rebuild, the first half of Free Practice 1 was spent running in the new components on the bike, which was fine for Rory as it gave him good time to understand the demanding curves of the fantastic Czech Republic Circuit.
Temperatures over the weekend were in the 30’s with track temp reaching mid 40’s.
With steady improvement throughout FP1, 2 Rory went into qualifying feeling confident of a good grid position, for most of the session he held 13th position, he came into the pits for a suspension setting change and when he re-joined the track there were no opportunities to hook up with other riders close by to find a slipstream to improve his time so he spent the last half of the session by himself. Within the last two minutes of qualifying Rory had been pushed down to 19th on the grid, 0.8 of a second covering 10th to 19th place!
Race 1
Rory had a great start pulling in several riders by turn 1, with the run down to turn two he left his braking to the last millisecond only to run a bit wide as the rider in-front held his line and leaned over in-front of Rory, Rory ended up hitting the riders rear tyre causing both riders to go down and out of Race 1, a rare mistake from Rory but a learning curve to take note from.
Race 2
The start of race 2 was pretty similar to the first with Rory managing to make up several places by turn 2, he found himself in a battle for 10th by the end of lap one, when a rider in-front fell and caused the group to split, he was now in a 5 rider battle for 13th which would see Rory change positions several times with slip-streaming riders dropping him from 13th to 16th in what was a great battle throughout the race. On the final lap Rory was once again in 13th but coming out the final turn was slip-streamed and came across the line in 14th position and another 2 points.
Rory’s next outing will be his home GP at Silverstone 29-30th August.