The hand that giveth, taketh away. Hopper benefited from a safety car last round, but this round he was burned by the safety car in Race 1. Great ride by Gary Mason in the first race, and by Kirkham of course. Five races, five winners. Good racing. Laverty and Kiyo really did the field a big favor by making a bad tire choice. Byrne was robbed by a bad engine.
Race 2 was a much different affair. Laverty did the field a favor again (by increasing the gap to 6th place). Kirkham got the raw end of the deal, but it was a racing incident, imo. Byrne ran the show from the front, while Easton charged to be best of the rest. Solid points again by Hopper, which is nice to see.
Observations:
Every year I forget how nice the British tracks are, and every year I get to remember how nice it is to see tracks with character instead of glorified superslabs built by bureaucrats who want to preen in front of TV cameras.
I think Byrne's explosion might be a result of the new Showbiz rules. The first 9 rounds are relatively useless b/c it is more about managing points and avoiding mistakes. If the first 9 rounds aren't as useful, why not run the engines a bit longer or leave off a few performance parts? It was a wet race so I suppose the engine could have been spinning up too quickly if the traction control wasn't working terribly well, but I still imagine that more teams will be cutting costs as much as possible without losing touch.
