The Wiltshire-based rider is competing in BSB’s Superstock
British motorcycle racer, Max Symonds, competes in British Superbike’s National Superstock category on his Yamaha R1. The rider also won Castle Combe Circuit’s coveted NG Road Racing ‘King of Combe’ race in 2023.
Following an intense start to his 2024 campaign, Symonds recently competed in rounds at both Norfolk’s Snetterton and Kent’s Brands Hatch, where varying weather and other obstacles didn’t stop him coming away feeling positive with some good results.
Read how he got on at these rounds in his team’s own words below…
Snetterton – Surviving crazy weather conditions to record another strong finish
“The weather played a big part in Max’s third round of National Superstock in 2024. Following clear skies and sun on Friday where Max bettered his personal best at the circuit by 0.8 of a second, the heavens opened on Saturday for qualifying with several rounds of heavy rain flooding the circuit and caused the on-track action to be halted. In-between this when bikes were on track crashes happened every lap – over the day a total of 96 riders hit the deck which was a new record for most crashes in a single day of BSB! Max kept it upright throughout this to qualify 24th.
“The race was another weather-affected challenge, in Max’s own words ‘I was glad to see dry conditions as we lined up on the grid for the race as Snetterton in the wet felt like an ice rink! I got a good start and was immediately able to progress into the top 20, being a little down on top speed compared to other bikes meant I had to rely heavily on my EBC brakes to make up further positions on corner entry.’
“Just as I was preparing to make a push for the final few laps, the rain came out again and the race was red-flagged. The rain quickly backed off again and we were back out for a five-lap sprint. It was pretty chaotic fighting with so many riders over such a short race, with passes happening almost every corner, I lost a couple of places on the first lap but was able to fight back and regain all of them over the following few laps with some really close passes into the tight hairpin turn 6 eventually crossing the line in P19 only a couple of seconds off the points.”
Brands Hatch – Back in the points with best results of the season so far
“Having made good progress at Snetterton to be closer to the points, Max and the team headed into Brands Hatch confident that further progress could be made and that scoring points was a real possibility. The weekend started positively with strong pace in practice and qualifying where Max was consistently in the top 20, qualifying P16 for race one.
“‘I was keen to make the most of the best qualifying of 2024 so far getting away to a good start and passing a few riders in front over the first couple of laps. I was then left with a bit of a gap to the next group so just kept my head down and clicked off the laps, managing to get past one of them towards the end of the race finishing up in P14 and scoring our first points of the season.’
“After making some positive improvements with the bike setup in morning warm-up, I was looking forward to race 2. I made a good start but lost a few positions on lap one. In the first half of the race, I battled hard to regain these positions and was in P17, unfortunately the gap to the next riders was too big for me to progress any further so I focused on being consistent and pushing my pace to keep my position, which I did by just 0.004 over the next rider at the line! It was another really positive race where I went 0.5 seconds faster than the day before and I’m looking forward to building on this in our next races at Silverstone as part of the MotoGP weekend!”
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