Grand prix racer Cormac Buchanan struggled for pace at the penultimate round of the Moto3 World Championship in Portugal.
The Southland teenager headed into the weekend confident based on his previous form at the Autodromo Internacional do Algarve, near Portimao.
However, he was forced to settle for 20th in Sunday’s race.
“Obviously it wasn’t the weekend that we were after – especially at a track like this where I had a really strong preseason test and have been very fast here in previous championships. I saw it as an opportunity to get back fighting at the front but it didn’t pan out like that,” he said.
“In the race I just didn’t feel good. Everything felt really slow and I didn’t have any feeling on the bike. I couldn’t push hard because I felt like I was going to end up on the ground.
“For me it was just a race to finish and try and learn as much as possible doing laps. I’m really upset about it because it was a weekend where I thought we could be strong.
“I know in racing we are going to have weekends like this and we just need to concentrate on moving forward. I take the learnings gained as my positives.”
It was challenging from the outset for the kiwi, who is navigating his rookie season in the sport’s top echelon.
“A crash in FP1 didn’t help. I got caught in almost like a false neutral exiting the corner and when the gear re-engaged I got launched into a highside and landed quite hard. So I missed all of FP1 for that which put us on the back foot straight away,” Buchanan said.
“In practice that afternoon we were able to decent lap times and then opted to switch to the soft tyre. Unfortunately, it then started to rain and that was session done so we weren’t able to put in a time attack.
“With it wet again in FP2 on Saturday, we headed into qualifying with only about 12 dry laps under our belt and none on the soft tyres.
“Qualifying was really difficult. I just honestly struggled for pace. A crash on the out lap didn’t help but also didn’t affect things too badly as I got back out for some laps but it wasn’t enough to pass to Q2 which was frustrating.”
Buchanan now prepares for the final round at Valencia in Spain this weekend.
“My goal is to end the season on a high so we can head into next year with good feelings. We’ll keep our head up and stay focused because I know it’s not far around the corner and I know we can get back to where we deserve to be with the speed we had in the first half of the season. We will keep working.”