Sam Osborne (photo by Alan Lygo)
After another good practice session at Donington Park, Sam Osborne had every reason to feel confident going into the three-race fixture that made up the second weekend of the 2016 Thundersport GB season. Unfortunately for Sam and many other competitors, the weather had other ideas. Sam, who rides for the leading Suzuki specialist tuning and racing team MSG Racing, is sponsored by The Motorsport Division of Lane Electronics.
In Race 1, Sam qualified seventh on the grid and was soon leading his class and was second overall. It began to look like Sam would repeat his success at the first weekend of the season and take the chequered flag in his class. Like all the other bikes in the race, Sam’s Suzuki GSX-R 600 was on dry tyres so when it began to rain he ‘toned it down a bit’ in the expectation that there would be a race-altering lack of adhesion flag or even a race-stopping red flag as the rain started to get worse. The flags never came and, despite being ‘careful’ Sam had what he describes as a ‘massive high side’ coming into McLeans.
After more than ten riders went down, the race was stopped. Sam’s bike (and Sam!!) were both damaged and were unable to join the restart just ten minutes later.
Despite a possible broken hand and a badly damaged bike, Sam managed to get home in 8th place in Race 2 and did even better in Race 3, coming 4th.
Sam Osborne (photo by Gavin Elliott)
A brilliant achievement by a brilliant rider.
Thankfully, both rider and machine can be fixed – hopefully in time for the next race meeting at Snetterton at the end of April.
Lane Electronics’ Motorsport Division
We established a Motorsport Division around three years ago to offer high performance electronic connector solutions for multiple applications across racing platforms including cars, bikes and boats at all levels of the sport. Our products – such as the latest circular connectors from Souriau’s 8STA Series – are used extensively in bike racing.
If you have any questions about our motorsport connectors or any of our other connector products or services, please email sales@fclane.com or call us on +44 (0)1403 790661.
