Robbie had been waiting for Croft all season, following his 8.5 second distant race win at the circuit in 2008. Unfortunately, the weekend turned out to be the worst weekend the team have experienced in recent years.

With Robbie more confident than ever, it was evident that he wanted to make an impact on the main Supersport teams, in the hopes of securing a ride for the 2010 season, unfortunately, the impact was a different kind.

Robbie head out for Free Practice 1, and although he was feeling very confident, he had a huge high side on lap 3, leaving him battered and bruised on the wrong side of the circuit with no way of returning while the session was running.
Not knowing what caused the crash, Robbie put it down to cold tyres acknowledged his terrible error.
 
With the team rushing to prepare the bike for FP2, things didn’t look good. Minutes before the session start, a gearbox issue was found. Unfortunately, with no time to rectify the issue, the team were forced to end the day early.

With an overnight rebuild and the fault on the gearbox fixed, Robbie was confident of making up for lost ground. He head out for qualifying, but again forced to end the session early with battery and clutch issues. It was then time to panic as the team had not yet qualified for Sunday’s race.
Again, the team put their heads together to try and fault find, they changed the battery for a standard one which was over 4 times the weight of the original, they then inspected the clutch and found what they thought would cause the problem, unfortunately this was not to be and Robbie only managed 1 clean lap to place him 30th on the grid.

The panic soon hit home as the team were desperate to find what was causing the problem. With little else to change, they decided a change of clutch was needed. Unknown whether this would fix the issue they head out for warm-up. Amazingly, the problem was solved and Robbie complete the full session and ended a credible 17th.

Confident for the race ahead, a few last minute setting changes were made. Robbie knew what he had to do and he was confident of making the weekend worth while, then disaster struck again, on the start line, Robbie's bike lost all electrical power and cut out, he managed to get it started again after a frantic few seconds, and then the race began. Within 1 lap he was 11 places up on his qualifying. Robbie was pushing and began to close the gap on his competitors, his lap times were getting faster and faster and he was within the same group as Cup leader Sam Lowes. Unfortunately, on lap 5, Robbie was too eager to close the ground and again high sided, forcing the pace car onto the circuit. Robbie had crashed out of 16th position, 3rd in the cup.

"This weekend needs to be forgotten about immediately. We should have thrown in the towel after the first practice crash, but we had high hopes for the race and somehow thought that the race would have a turn of fortune. After such a tough weekend, I just wanted to get a result for the team to repay them for the hard work they put in over the weekend. They worked tirelessly on my bike to make things perfect for me.
I can’t really take any positives from this weekend. It’s been a nightmare. Obviously I am lucky I didn’t break anything when I crashed, but the thing that stands out for the weekend was how well we all worked together as a team. Everything that needed changing was changed and all credit to the guys behind the scenes, because they don’t get the recognition they deserve, I can’t thank them enough.
I have a test before Silverstone where I hope to iron out any issues with the bike. I must get back to winning ways, with Sam being disqualified, I still have my title hopes high, roll on Silverstone!" explained Robbie

There is now a one weekend break ahead of the penultimate round of the British Superbike series at Silverstone, where Robbie hopes to get his title hopes back alive.

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