PHOTOGRAPHY BY GOLD & GOOSE
MONTEREY, CA, JULY 18—After what the rider himself described as a nightmare few rounds Randy De Puniet suddenly came out confident and faster than of late, going eighth fastest and feeling more like his old self.
“I feel comfortable and everything has started good since this morning so I am quite happy and we made a few adjustments,” De Puniet said. “I am really surprised because I did exactly the same job as I did in the past six races, but here it is fine.”
For De Puniet, his tough start to his rookie World Superbike season needed to end sooner rather than later, for his own state of mind.
“For me it was very important to turn things around because except for Phillip Island, where I was fast, since Thailand it has been a nightmare,” he said. “Honestly, mentally, it has not been too easy to be in this situation. I came here to race, to try to come back at the top and finally I am at the back, so, it has been very hard.”
De Puniet had surgery recently to allow him to regain his previous speed and fitness.
“I decided to have an operation to my hand to feel better, also to my ankle, so everything I did was to be more competitive and fast,” he said. “There are still five rounds left, 10 races, so everything can happen and I really hope this weekend can be a great weekend for me. I wanted to come back at a high level and to enjoy racing because is my job and my hobby, and when you have a shit result and have no feeling, no confidence, it is a nightmare.
“Today we started with a normal bike. I have never had a normal bike like this since Phillip Island. I have no idea what they may have changed. Maybe the break in the season was good for the bike—she went on holiday somewhere…”
Voltcom Crescent Suzuki team boss Paul Denning was partly mystified by why former MotoGP rider Randy De Puniet suddenly made improvements that took him to within a second of the fastest riders on day one at Laguna, but gave some insight into why bikes that contributed to a disastrous weekend in Misano came out of the crates in America working more effectively for his French star.
“We have made some setting changes for both riders based on the problems we had at Misano, based on feedback Alex [Lowes] gave after riding the 8-Hour bike in Japan, which had some quite different settings and was a lot simpler on the strategy side but easier to understand because of that,” said Denning. “That was something that gave Alex confidence then and we have done our best to replicate some of that today.
“I think for Randy it was a combination of him being confident in the track—because he used to go well here on the MotoGP bike—the grip character also. It was not that grippy today, but it was not greasy like Misano, so maybe that helped the bike a little bit. But I think he is just riding a little better. I think we have taken small step, maybe in the start point of the bike settings. But to be honest if we had made a big step with the bike Alex would be as fast as Chaz Davies today. Randy has some stuff on his bike today that Alex may try on his bike tomorrow, as Randy’s comments were positive in the area that Alex needs to improve.”
