FB: You dominated the season last year up until the showdown. What happened?
JO: “It was a really good year. It’s hard to have a faultless year from start to finish. Unfortunately, my couple of crashes and worst results came in the last three rounds, whereas other riders’ crashes came in the rounds previous to the showdown. Although I made fewer mistakes than everybody last year, I was heavily penalised because of the point in the year that I made mine. I had some issues that began after the crash at Silverstone; I started to struggle a bit physically. At Oulton I wasn’t really that comfortable, crashing on the Saturday afternoon when I was leading, finishing second place in the second race on the Sunday, and then crashing out of the last race. That was the beginning of the bad turn. With all the showdown rounds being so close – Donington was the following weekend – we didn’t have any break after that. It was straight back into the racing and, yeah, I didn’t quite recover. It was still quite strong for us but it was just unfortunate that the wins I had came before the showdown stage.”
FB: You’ve made some great progress in the last couple of years. Do you feel there is extra pressure to take the title this year?
“No, I don’t think there’s any extra pressure. From myself, there always is because I want to be the British champion. But
