8:57 PM
CHRIS BURNS is back on English soil after securing third place in the ONK Dutch Superbike Championship at Assen on Sunday.
The Westerhope rider had headed out to the final round of his rookie season in the leading Netherlands domestic series with a 10-point advantage over his nearest rival, outgoing champion Danny de Boer.
With both riders piloting Hondas and running on Dunlop rubber, the battle lines were drawn between the former MotoGP star and the Dutch favourite as they headed out to race on Sunday afternoon.
Things had taken a bit of a turn for the worse for Burns during Saturday's qualifying session as he struggled with tyre degradation and could only manage to qualify seventh, while de Boer was ahead in fifth.
But his GS Racing team worked tirelessly through the day and long into the night to try and find a solution, changing set-up to balance out the problem.
"I knew I had 10 points advantage so I didn't have to break my neck to win the race or anything, but I was concerned we were only getting eight laps out of each tyre and the race was 15", he said. "On Saturday I really thought we were doomed. The front was just shredding and no one could understand what was causing it. No one else was having this problem which made it all the more frustrating."
At the green light he got a good start and was up to fifth when the race was red-flagged because of a huge crash further down the field. The race was then restarted over five laps, with all riders lining up in their original grid spots.
"At the restart I got away well and was up to third at the first turn, but I was having all sorts of chatter and grip troubles," he explained. "They'd had to change the settings to get around the tyre problems, so it meant the bike wasn't handling as well as it normally does, but it had to be done to get us to last the race."
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