Booth-Amos picks up some reward from a tough weekend

Newport’s Tom Booth-Amos endured a mixed weekend in round 10 of the FIM Supersport World Championship at Spain’s Motorland Aragón circuit. 

After a hard-fought third-place finish at Magny-Cours last time out, Booth-Amos arrived at the demanding 5.07km venue chasing his ninth podium of the season.

In free practice, Booth-Amos steadily improved his pace, eventually setting a lap time of 1:53.779 – just over a second off the benchmark.

But his Superpole qualifying session was disrupted by an early crash, limiting him to just eight laps and leaving him 10th on the grid. A further setback came in Saturday’s warm-up when contact with another rider earned him a long-lap penalty for the opening race.

In race one, Booth-Amos held his grid position in the opening laps before serving his penalty on lap three, which dropped him back to 18th.

Despite pushing hard, he could only recover to 15th at the flag, before being handed an additional one-place penalty for contact with a rival. 

Reflecting afterwards, he admitted: “Not the ideal day that I and the team hoped for. Unfortunately, I got a long lap penalty after an incident in warm-up and then I just didn’t have a good feeling with the bike to do what I needed to do.”

Sunday’s second race  brought a much-improved performance. Starting from 12th on the grid, Booth-Amos made a lightning getaway and quickly climbed through the field and battled to secure seventh place and valuable championship points. 

“Happy enough to have salvaged seventh,” he said. “I struggled all weekend with the feeling on the bike. We need to really look at things moving forward to Estoril because we must improve in some areas. Thanks to the guys for all their hard work as always.”

Round 11 is at Estoril in Portugal on October 11-12.