WSS: Yamaha Supersport Donington preview

Crutchlow heads home looking to extend championship lead in Donington

After an incredible race win in difficult racing conditions at the Misano round for the 2009 World Supersport Championship last weekend, British rider Cal Crutchlow is preparing to do it all again on Sunday in front of his home crowd at Donington. Crutchlow is no stranger to the Donington circuit having ridden there regularly in 2008 in the British Superbike Championship with great success. Lack of international track knowledge has not stopped Crutchlow from dominating this year's season, but good track knowledge could see him perform even better.

Team mate Fabien Foret missed out on the Donington round last year after a big crash in Brno left him recovering for several rounds, he heads to the British circuit looking to ride the circuit on a Yamaha for the first time on the Friday free practice session ready for Saturday's qualifying.

"It'll be good to go to my home race," said Cal Crutchlow. "I'm really looking forward to it. I can't wait to be getting in front of British fans and doing my best for them. I'm not treating this round any different from any other race though as we want to win them all with no exceptions. Having said that, to win at home would be nice!"

"It's going to be the first time here on a Yamaha for me," said Fabien Foret. " I didn't race here last year as I was still recovering from my crash in so I'm looking forward to spending some time on the track and learning how it feels with this bike on Friday. The bike set up is working really well for me at the moment, I'm hoping the weather stays good all weekend so we can really test some of the set up changes."

Wilco Zeelenberg, Yamaha World Supersport Team Manager "Donington will be a special race for both our riders. It looks like the weather is quite consistent for the weekend which is good. Last year was a funny race, the weather was very unpredictable so I hope it will be dry for practices this year to test our packages and make sure they are good enough to be in front as we are lacking data from this circuit. The information we have from last year's race from when Eugene Laverty rode for us is what we will be using to prepare for this weekend which is odd as he is now our main competition. Cal is really keen to perform well at his home round and for Fabien it's the first on the Yamaha at Donington so let's wait and see what happens! The base setup is working very well at each round so far, we didn't change much for Misano last week, so I expect it to work well in here."

-credit: yamaha