Max Cook is gearing up for another fight for the podium in the ZYN British Superbike Championship next weekend (July 3/4/5) at Snetterton for the AJN Steelstock bimota team.
Snetterton is the home round for the team’s title sponsor AJN Steelstock and Cook is confident that he is ready to be in the battle to give them something to celebrate. At Knockhill Cook had his first DNF of the season, but bounced back strongly with a fifth and seventh place finish on Sunday at a track that has traditionally been difficult for him in the past.
Cook said: “Knockhill was really good for and I feel that I did a lot better than I expected. Obviously, I know we had a good run at Donington with podiums, but I knew Knockhill could be more harder. On the Friday we had our first wet sessions on the AJN Steelstock bimota and it was actually really positive after doing it all in the wet; we didn’t need to as the weather was looking good, but we wanted the experience and we had a positive day and had a good feeling.
“On Saturday morning we had a little bit of a shock as the bike was a little bit outside the window of where we needed to be and it felt really aggressive on all the bumps; which is just the nature of Knockhill. It felt quite tricky to ride, but the team managed to come up with a lot of options to try to make the bike more comfortable for me to ride and managed to have a great qualifying and I really enjoyed it.
“Unfortunately I had a couple of crashes on Saturday, which is a bit unlike me but I guess I was just pushing it. The set-up with the bike gave me plenty of warning to crash, but I was just pushing the limits really to just see what I could do and unfortunately, I crashed out of the race for the first time this year, which I was gutted about.
“On Sunday I just wanted to finish and finish in a good way and I was just glad to have done that with a fifth and a seventh. Race two was a really strong race and I had a bit of bike trouble over the last few laps, but I was pleased to see the chequered flag and bring it home in fifth.
“The last race, was a big positive as I started twelfth on the restart and then didn’t have the best of launches and ended up being about 14th. The nature of the track makes it hard, so I battled my way to seventh and was just catching Glenn and Rory in front of me, but then I was getting a few warnings and I thought ‘I don’t want to throw it down the road here’, so I managed to finish seventh.
“On paper that may not look the best, but from before Knockhill started, I feel that this was a huge achievement as in the past I have never done well there, even in the dry so to finish with two good results made me really happy.
“I feel very confident going into Snetterton as I feel that it is a track that should really suit the AJN Steelstock bimota so I am very much looking forward to going there next and seeing what we can do.”