A new team and new form for
Jack Hart
After round 4 of the European Talent Cup at Aragon I was given the chance to join the team KRP which is run by Mark Keen for the rest of the season. Mark and his team have a huge amount of experience racing at this level and have brought through lots of good riders such as John McPhee, so it was too good an opportunity to miss even though leaving Wilson Racing was a difficult decision.
I had only raced at Jerez once two years ago but I had really liked it so the plan was just to get used to the new bike and track on the Thursday before we then worked on set up on the Friday. Within a few laps though I felt good on the bike and was able to start setting quite good lap times quickly and felt confident with my markers and after the first session we started working on the set up. One of the benefits of riding with Marks team is that they have full data on the bike so Mark is able to go through that with me on where I am struggling on track and compare it with other riders he has had in his team. The one thing we changed was to put a pad on the tank to move me back a bit which my rider coach
had been taking about doing and once I got used to it I felt a good difference.
For the Saturday qualifying the track temperature was going to be a lot cooler for Q1 so we decided to use my allocation of two sets of tyres and change them mid-session as once the track temperature gets high it is very difficult to set fast lap times. In the afternoon the track temp was over 45 deg and we were using the old tyres from Q1 so we didn’t expect to improve my times, but I managed to set some really good laps and on my last lap on 16 lap old tyres set a time that was just 0.1s slower than my fastest lap in the morning. We knew from this I would have really strong race pace starting from 10th on the grid.
I didn’t get a great start and dropped a couple of places. I ended up battling for my position with the second group whilst the front group got away, I still really enjoyed the race though and in the end managed to finish in 11th to get my best ever European Talent Cup finish and first points.
I was determined to get away with the lead group in race 2 as I knew I could do the same lap times as them and I managed to do this after a good start. At the end of lap 1 I was in 11th position but I was in the front group and as the laps went down I ended up in 8th position right with the front group fighting for the lead. With two laps to go I started to push harder but the whole group did as well and one of the other riders made a mistake and swerved right in front of me but I managed to overtake and get into 6th. He then got back past me and I went a bit wide and had totally lost my rhythm and had started making mistakes so when I tried to push on I crashed at 104mph going into the last lap. This was really disappointing (and quite sore!) as I could have had a really good finish and I also caused a bit of damage to the bike.
The next round of the European Talent Cup is at Albacete over the weekend of 19-20th October and may be wet at this time of year so anything can happen but I cant wait to get out there again.
Massive thanks to Mark and his team for all the work they put in and also to my team mate Josh Whatley and his family for welcoming us and looking after me and my dad! Thanks again to all my sponsors as without them I couldn’t be doing this championship and competing against the best riders from Europe and beyond.
Photo Credit to Agustin Ubiola.