No Eastern magic in Macau for McGuinness
Tuesday, 24 November 2009
No Eastern magic in Macau for McGuinness
Morecambe's John McGuinness was unable to add to his impressive tally of eight podiums at the Macau Grand Prix when he was forced to retire from Saturday's 15-lap race. McGuinness, who lined up as part of the Hydrex IGT Honda team, had been running inside the top ten but was unable to advance forward as he would have liked and, struggling for grip, he retired on the seventh lap, his first DNF at the Far East venue since 1999.
Practice and qualifying saw unusually cold conditions with temperatures only just reaching double figures and this affected a number of riders as grip levels were a lot lower than normal. Riding the Hydrex machine for the very first time, John started steadily and after placing tenth in free practice, he moved up to eighth in the opening qualifying session. He then recorded his best time of the week in final qualifying, a lap of 2m28.059s seeing him line up in seventh place and on the second row of the grid.
With conditions slightly more favourable for Saturday's afternoon race, the race was initially red flagged due to a false start but at the second attempt it was underway and John completed the first lap in ninth place. He held station here for the next three laps but on lap 5 it was clear all was not well as he dropped back to 14th and on lap seven it was an extremely disappointed John that pulled in to the pits to retire.
Speaking later, John said: "It's never easy jumping on an unfamiliar bike and being immediately competitive and, if I'm being brutally honest, I never found the levels of confidence I needed to be pushing at the front. The conditions all week were really tough and in the 12 years I've been coming here I've never known it to be so cold and that played a part in my qualifying performance being steady, rather than spectacular. Having said that, my lap times improved throughout and I felt that I could have run the pace to go with the other boys in the race."
"Sadly, it didn't pan out that way and after a mediocre start, I was fighting really hard just to stay in the top ten, not at all what I was hoping, or expecting, when I came out here. It was a disappointing race for me and I never found my confidence on the bike. The team did a great job and couldn't have given me any more but I simply couldn’t find any rhythm or pace and by the time I reached lap 7 I took the decision to retire.”
John now heads in to the winter break and hopes to have details of his 2010 plans announced soon.
Phil Wain
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