Dean Thomas

Dean Thomas has finally decided to hang up his leathers and move into team management, following a ten year race career in the UK. Along with his business partner, Thomas has decided to run a two man British Supersport team in 2008. The team will be called Mission Racing and he is fielding Nick Medd and Sam Warren.

“I’ll be running my own race team next year and today at Brands Hatch will be the last of it for me in British Superbikes. It is going to be a new era for me next year and a new challenge, plus lots more things to do but it is something I’m looking forward to,” he explained.

He did admit that it may be a bit early for him to be finishing his career but it is the right thing to do for the team. “I think it is a touch early for me to be hanging up my leathers but on the flip side there is an opportunity there for me to run my own team, Mission Racing and to get it moving. Nik Elwood my business partner is involved with it, and it is the right time for him as well,” he said.

“I‘ve either got to run the team myself or put somebody else in there to run it,” he explained, “If I was to do that then in one or two years time I’d need to disrupt and restructure it to accommodate me which is a bit pointless, so it is better for me, the team and the riders to get in now, plan it all, lay it all out and structure it the way it needs to be. Hopefully we can be contenders.”

He finished off by saying his thanks to all his fans, “I really appreciate all the help that everybody has given me over the last ten years since I’ve been in the UK and all the support really. Thanks to all the fans and everybody following it. For me it has been a good career and I cherish the fact that people have helped me get where I am. Hopefully next year they will support me with the team and keep on with it,” he concluded.

Dean Thomas finished his motorcycle race career with two solid finishes on his Samsung Suzuki at Brands Hatch.

Summing up both races he said, “That was eventful! They were pretty good races really. Obviously the results were no where near what we would like them to be.”

He finished in sixteenth and nineteenth but it didn’t stop him enjoying the race, “We weren’t at the pointy end and we weren’t running in the top ten, but they were two good races, more so the second one than the first. The first one was ok coming in sixteenth place was frustrating as I know I’m capable of running up the front but those days are gone now by the looks of it. It was good fun, a good race, a hard work but it was what it was. The Samsung Suzuki team have been great all year, but they have had restrictions they’ve had to work round with the machinery and they have done the best they can which they proved this weekend.”

For race two Thomas and his team-mate Sean Emmett had an on track battle which kept them both amused. “The second race for me was the most fun I’ve had for a while, even though Sean Emmett and myself were dicing with each other for eighteenth position,” he explained, “It was a giggle because we are both on the exact same motorbike, on the exact same tyres and it shows that neither of us are lacking in ability or speed, just the machinery underneath us just isn’t quite up to the job. It was fun. It was almost like having our own race.”

He would have loved a top ten for his last race as he went on to say, “For me it was ok, to finish in the top ten and to finish at the pointy end and to finish my racing career would have been nice but on the flip side to have a fun race like that was really good.”

With a whole new challenge ahead of running his own race team Thomas hadn’t really thought about the fact that he is hanging up his leathers, until after race two. “I hadn’t really thought about it. I just thought, ‘I’ll move on to the next level that is the end of racing that is not a problem.’ It didn’t cross my mind until after the second race and then it sunk in. I thought, ‘I’m not going to do that again.’ That was a bit of a change, I was a bit, ‘Ooookkkkkaaayyyyyyy.’ I’m going to miss it; I really am going to miss it. I’ve been racing motorbikes for seventeen years and it has pretty much been my life. I’m not going to be the guy sitting in the seat doing the racing but I am going to be the guy sitting in the garage watching the guys do it which is probably more nerve racking for me as I’ve never had to do that before. It’s the end of one era but there is a new challenge round the corner and it is one that I’m desperate to take on properly and do a good job.”

Dean Thomas and his Samsung Suzuki took to the Brands Hatch Indy circuit for the last qualifying session of the Bennetts British Superbike 2007 season. He completed the singular session in fourteenth place

Things were not going too well in free practice but they started to come right in qualifying as he explained, “Qualifying went pretty well actually considering how much we are struggling. We’ve been a little off the pace and struggling with rear grip. We have a rear grip issue and a chatter issue which we worked on all day Friday and all of this morning trying to get rid of. We went into qualifying and put some qualifying tyres on and it cured all our problems in one hit! So that proves that it is a rear grip issue that we are dealing with.”

Now that they have proved what the problem is they feel there is no need to change the bike, “We’re not going to mess around with the bike now, we are going to leave it and go back to Dunlop to see if we can cure the problem that way, with a different construction tyre.”

Although fourteenth has turned into Thomas’ regular position he was still happy with the out come, “We’ve qualified well, we are in fourteenth which is where we usually are. I’m less than a tenth off Walker and the guys I should be battling with really, so overall it is quite good. The down side is we are still not there with the race tyres, which if we can’t cure that for tomorrow then it will be a tough day.”

The Brands Hatch Indy circuit isn’t a favourite of a lot of riders but Thomas doesn’t mind it as he went on to say, “I like it here; it isn’t a bad little circuit. I love the full circuit, I’m not super keen on the small one but as the years have ticked over I have grown to like it. I had a good qualifying here last year when I was on the Hawk bike and pretty good races considering the bike was new at that stage. We’ve done reasonably well today. I’m just hoping we can have a decent result as it will mean quite a few things to me to be in the top fifteen.”

The Samsung Suzuki team had a race day to forget at Donington Park with Dean Thomas having to pull out of race one with a blown engine. Due to his team-mate Sean Emmett having similar issues over the weekend, the team didn’t have any engines left for race two which therefore saw Thomas side lined.

“It was disastrous really,” sighed Thomas, “We have been struggling all weekend but race one the engine blew up. I think it has run a crank or something like that. My team-mate Sean Emmett had trouble yesterday, he did one yesterday morning and did one again in qualifying which is unusual as we don’t have any blow ups normally. That ran us down to zero engines apart for the one I had and I did that in the first race. So that was it all our engines gone, we were lucky enough to be lent one by NB Racing and we wrecked it as well!”

It is very unusual to have this kind of a failure let alone several in one weekend as Thomas highlighted, “It is so unusual it doesn’t make any sense. The guys have looked at it and been through all the data and tried to work out what is wrong but for some reason all we can think of is an oil starvation. Must be to do with it being on its side for a long periods of time, we did have a problem with one other race track where we knew we had to run a little bit more oil but we weren’t told to do so here so that might be the case. The engines are being sent off to be rebuilt to get them up and running and ready for Brands.”

Following a tough weekend like this Thomas is in the process of regrouping and getting ready for the final round at Brands Hatch. “I know it is getting towards the end of the season and we are not fighting for a championship but we are still doing our best and all the guys in the workshop and Samsung and everybody else that is involved with the race team, work hard to make sure that we do the best we can. It is disappointing really, this is the first time ever that I can think of in my racing career where I’ve spent the second race sitting in hospitality with the guests!” he said joking about the unusual situation.

“Roll on Brands Hatch and hopefully, fingers crossed we won’t have this problem and Sean and I will be somewhere where we should be. Stuck in the top ten bracket hopefully and get a decent result to finish the year off,” he concluded.

The final round of the Bennett British Superbike Championship takes place at Brands Hatch on the 12th – 14th October.

Dean Thomas and his Samsung Suzuki team had a qualifying session to forget at Donington Park at the penultimate round of the Bennetts British Superbike Championship. Thomas suffered front end grip problems and traffic on his fast lap all of which saw him relegated to twenty fifth place on the grid.

“We’ve been struggling a bit all weekend. It is a front grip issue with this bike and Sean Emmett is on my spare bike this weekend and he is having a very similar problem but not quite as bad. We are running slightly different spec forks and so on and we have just been struggling,” he explained, “This afternoon we chucked in a soft race tyre and went out and did a few laps but didn’t go any quicker than I did on a normal hard race tyre which proves it is not a rear grip issue it is definitely a front issue. Then I went out on qualifier and went quick though the first two splits and then got hung up behind Hutchinson in the last one. Basically, a rough day at the office really. Bring on tomorrow!”

Qualifying was difficult as the entire season has been, “It has been a really difficult year this year. I mean Samsung has worked hard and Dienza has worked hard to put a good package together and they have done a good job,” said Thomas.

There is only so much progress that could be made with the machinery and they have done all in their power as Thomas went on to say, “The thing has been that the bikes are not quite as competitive as we need and as the rounds are ticking on we are limited with the amount of progress we can make with this bike, we can’t make anymore. Everybody else can still go forward and we can’t and it is starting to show, the extra guys are pulling in front of us now and we are gradually dropping down the list.”

Sean Emmett has made a welcome return to the team and has backed up everything that Thomas has said, “Having Sean on board is really good as he has pretty much said everything that I have, which means we are doing everything that we can and it shows the team are doing their best. It is a matter of just getting this weekend done with and move onto Brands and hopefully things will work a little bit better there. That is this year, there is not much we can do other than do the best we can and wrap it up and see what happens next year.”

With the season drawing to a close, Thomas is yet to disclose his plans for next year saying, “I do know exactly what I’m doing, how I’m doing it and what with and so on and so on and at Brands we will announce it all. I’m looking forward to it.”

Dean Thomas and his Samsung Suzuki team had a tough bank holiday race day at Cadwell Park securing a fourteenth place finish in race one and a DNF due to a slipping clutch in race two.

Thomas had a difficult weekend all round as he explained, “It was a bit of a struggle really. We’ve struggled all weekend, I mean we qualified in sixteenth, I crashed Sunday morning and wrecked my number one bike and was stuck on my number two bike and we have just really struggled.”

Race one had a spanner in the works from the out set as he went on to say, “In the first race we had a bit of an out-of-round front tyre which gave us even more chatter than we already had so it just hindered us. I got hung up with Simon Andrews when he was trying to move out of the road when his clutch was playing up. They just got away from me and to cut a long story short I finished in fourteenth place. It’s not a fantastic result; it is a result as it is in the points but it is not a great result. We’ll move onto the next race and see what happens.”

With a second bite at the cherry in race two, things went from bad to worse, “That one didn’t go to plan either! It hasn’t been a very good weekend really!” joked Thomas. “I got a good start and got away well, I was sitting on the back of Plater and Haydon and there was a small gap to Smart. I was just hanging on and doing really good lap times, best we had managed all weekend. The bike didn’t feel so bad and then the clutch went, it just started slipping eight laps into the race and that was that.”

He couldn’t believe his bad luck and did his utmost to nurse it home, “I persevered with it for a lap or two just to see whether it would make the distance or not and it wasn’t going to. So I decided to pull in then. As I did people started falling off left, right and centre and carnage hit and that was that,” he concluded.

Thomas is now putting Cadwell firmly behind him and looking to Donington Park in a few weeks time. “I am looking forward to Donington; it should suit us a little bit better. I’m looking forward to the last two rounds to be fair. I think Donington will be better for us and I’m looking forward to it, it will be good to get out and get a result in the last two rounds.”

Round twelve of the Bennetts British Superbike Championship will take place at Donington Park on the 21st – 23rd September.

Dean Thomas had a difficult day on track at Cadwell Park when he crashed his Samsung Suzuki during final free practice. Due to the crash he had to run his number two bike in qualifying and ended that session in sixteenth position.

“It just all went wrong!” he joked, “We have been struggling all weekend. Nothing too drastic just getting too much feedback out of the forks and losing a bit of rear grip. Each time we made an alteration to make the bike steer a little better we lose more grip, we change it back we get the grip back but then the bike won’t steer. We seem to be stuck in a rut really.”

The team made some changes which seemed to improve the situation however it didn’t work out well on track. “We made some changes and went a bit quicker. On the lap I went down I was half a second up on that split alone. I pushed a bit hard I think and just turned into turn two, got to the middle of the turn the front chattered twice and then folded the front tyre,” explained Thomas.

The crash caused a reasonable amount of damage which left the team stripping the good bits off the number one bike and putting them on the number two machine. Due to running the number two bike the bulk of qualifying was spent ironing out little problems as Thomas went on to say, “We spent most of that session trying to get all the teething problems out of the way and make sure the bike is to the spec we need and go for it. We are sixteenth on the grid which is back in the same bracket where we end up every time. A little bit more off the pace this weekend than normal, I think we have had a bit of a rough trot. I think tomorrow we will have a few tweaks to the bike and sort a few things out and we will be back to our usual position.”

He is hoping that once the racing gets under way he can break into the top ten where he feels he and his Samsung team should be.

Dean Thomas and his Samsung Suzuki finished both races at round ten of the Bennetts British Superbike Championship at Croft. He took sixteenth place in race one and twelfth in race two.

Race one wasn’t easy as Thomas explains, “It was a bit of a struggle in the first one. We spent the last two days testing out our tyre allocation and we found a tyre that is ok. We have been suffering with the bike all weekend, just as you are turning in you hit the ripples and it chatters its way across the track rather than holding the turn.”

With this happening all around the track it soon slowed down the hard riding Aussie. “When you add it up at each turn it is quite a bit of time, Dunlop gave us a different tyre that some of the guys were running to give it a test this morning. We had a bit of a clutch issue with the bike in morning warm-up so it was impossible to tell if it was helping or not. We decided to gamble it and try but it didn’t really work. Six laps and it started to taper off and we started to have trouble with it. So race one was no where near good enough.”

The team decided to play it safe in race two going back to a proven base setting. “Second race we reverted back to what we knew and it was a much faster race for us. Much, much faster race, the lap times were a lot better. I struggled on the last six laps as it dropped off a little bit, it is not a tyre fault or anything it is a bike fault you know. The bike is wearing the tyres out quicker than it should, but at least with the tyre we are running in the second race it was a bit more durable,” he explained.

“It was a twelfth place finish which is where we normally are, we seem to qualify there and finish there. It is another round done, it is a little frustrating. The Samsung guys are working hard and everybody is doing a good job, it is just so competitive. To finish in the top seven or eight is really hard work and we are doing the best we can,” he said.

With nothing to lose at Cadwell the team are planning some radical changes to set-up which might pay off. “There are a few things we are going to try for Cadwell which we have been considering for a little while but we haven’t had the chance to do it. At Cadwell we are going to set the second bike up completely different and go down that path and see if it works,” concluded Thomas.

The eleventh round of Bennetts British Superbike Championship is on the 25th -27th August at Cadwell Park in Lincolnshire. Click here for timetable.

-END-
Louise Cain
Vitesse PR

Round ten of the Bennetts British Superbike Championship at Croft has started out in frustrating fashion for Samsung Suzuki’s Dean Thomas who qualified in thirteenth place.

“It is a little frustrating, we came here and first thing Friday morning I was sixth or seventh quickest out of the box and putting in lap times around the low 23 mark which is not fast but not slow,” explained Thomas, “The problem is every session from then we have only progressed a few tenths at a time rather than half a second at a time. We have hit some sort of wall with the bike that we are struggling to get around.”

The team have struggled for set up as he went on to say, “It is a bit too rigid, it is not soaking the bumps up and it is quite a bumpy circuit. We have gone forward, we qualified with a 21.3 and we are in unlucky thirteenth. Saying that we are only a few hundredths off Michael Rutter and we are in front of Scott Smart.”

Some progress has been made but just not enough to take Thomas to where he wants to be, “To find that second and a half to two seconds to get to the sharp end, we can’t find that at the minute, not with the chassis. A little frustrating on one side but on the flip side the guys are working as hard as they can. The Samsung guys are doing a great job; I’m riding as fast as I can ride so I guess I can’t complain,” he said.

Croft is a circuit Thomas has done well at in the past as he says, “I don’t mind the circuit, it does suit the way I ride and I’ve been on the front row a couple of times in the past which is probably why I’m a little bit more frustrated really. I know that I can do it but we don’t seem to be able to carry the turn speed that the front guys are running with. Their bikes are soaking the bumps up and ours is chattering across them and it is holding us back a bit. It is the best that we can do we are working hard, we are not first but we know that we are doing the best that we can do and so be it.”

With race day looming he is being realistic about what results he can achieve, “The best we can aim for is top ten – the ninth to tenth bracket which is what we can do with the package we have. An average race its twelfth to fourteenth position which at Mallory Park I had those kinds of results. I feel that is where I’m going to finish this weekend. If we can run into the top ten I’d be pleased.”

A tragedy and atrocious weather conditions made Mallory Park one of the most difficult race weekends for Dean Thomas and his Samsung Suzuki Superbike team. The grid was dictated by the rider’s Championship points due to the weather negating any on track action for most of Saturday. This left Thomas starting from fifteenth on the grid and finishing in twelfth in race one and fourteenth in race two.

“I was a lot faster in race two but finished two places further back, not sure how that works!” joked Thomas, “Considering how the weekend has been with everything that has happened, I’m happy to get points. We only had half an hour in the dry on track so we just rolled out with the setting we had and didn’t make any changes.”

After race one the team decided to make some changes to their set-up, “Race two we changed the front and it was better but the rear got worse and it was a tighter race, everyone was all bunched up. Then it got red flagged and that was that. Not much to report really!”

Although the race was ended prematurely due to Jonathan Rea crashing and leaving debris on the track Thomas was happy with how the latter part of the race went, “I’m reasonably happy as in the second half of the race I was running the same times as Lavilla. I started from fifteenth and I had a lot of traffic to try and get through so I shouldn’t complain really.

Thomas is still recovering from cracking his ribs at Knockhill and he is still finding them painful as he went on to day, “My ribs are not so bad, I was struggling on the last three to four laps before the red flag came out in race two. I had enough of a gap to keep going and I was hanging onto Harris but that was hard work. I’ll be fully recovered by Croft so I’m looking forward to that.”

Dean would like to pass his condolences on to the Bridewell family and the Naturally Best team following the sad loss of Ollie Bridewell during the Mallory Park weekend.

The tenth round of the Bennetts British Superbike Championship takes place at Croft on the 10

-12th August.