DiSalvo Powerless to Finish 11th

Henny Ray Abrams | May 31, 2010

TOOELE, UT, MAY31: Jason DiSalvo described Monday’s World Supersport race as a tough day at the office… , “one of the longer ones of my career.”The ParkinGO BE1 Triumph rider arrived at Miller Motorsports Park hoping for a good showing in front of the home crowd. But those hopes were dimmed when the top speed numbers were published. Not that he had to see them.He knew he was at top speed deficit and would get eaten alive on the 3500 foot front straight. But the bad news didn’t end there.On the morning of the race his motor started to tie up. The advice from his crew chief was to take it easy, not exactly the kind of advice you want to hear heading into battle against some of the best middleweight riders in the world. But, if he wanted to finish, he had no choice. The advice was to shortshift-it meant he lost 800 rpm of peak power-which he followed, as painful as it was.At the start of the race, DiSalvo completed the first of 18 laps in ninth place, then dropped to 11th, which was where he would finish, though he fought for more. He kept Fabien Foret (Kaw) in sight to the very end, and even briefly made his way past two laps from the end, but that effort ended in futility.DiSalvo dogged Foret to the finish, but missed out on tenth by just over a tenth of a second. Now he has three weekends off, after which he’ll return for Misano where he hopes the team has some fresh motors.”Just struggling through a race with a tired engine,” he said. “We kinda felt it starting to tie up this morning and there was nothing we could really do. It was our only motor for that configuration with the electronics, so we just had to stick it out. The chassis was actually really good in the race and we didn’t have as bad a tire problem as we anticipated, so the tires were quite good throughout the entire race and just a matter those couple laps where I lost the draft completely, we were suffering.”He added, “It was just one of those days.”