HM Plant in great shape.

HM Plant Honda had a very good day at Snetterton, even despite them losing the lead in the championship and having both Ryuichi Kiyonari and Josh Brookes suffering mechanical breakdowns that put them out of a race each.
Let's look at Kiyo for a start, he's a rider whose results are purely based on confidence. When the Japanese fella is happy and confident in his bike's front tyre grip then he's pretty much unbeatable.
Behind the scenes Kiyo is an easy rider to read. His personal litmus paper is the amount of chatting he does before and inbetween the races. He's very much like Chris Walker in that respect. If Kiyo has got a set-up and things are going well then he'll happily natter away for ages, if there's any doubt - and I mean ANY doubt - in his mind then you'd be lucky to get more than a couple of words out him.
On Sunday Kiyo and I were talking about all sorts of things between races. We ended with me trying to persuade to come to Pamplona next year and run with the bulls. Kiyo said there was no way he'd do that... about ten minutes later he was asking more questions about it... five minutes after that he said he was curious and might come but wouldn't run. When he does then I'll do some video and post it on here.
The point is that Kiyo is a very happy bunny at the moment. Mechanical problems aside he's fast, smooth and really aggressive when he needs to be on track.
Ditto for Josh Brookes, the other side of the HM Plant Honda squad.
Good for those boys at Snetterton, as you would expect from the Hondas where historically their top speed and ability to launch out of corners has yielded impressive results.
Tommy Hill on the Worx Crescent Suzuki pulled it out of the bag yesterday too. Three good finishes put him back on the top of the title chase, helped by Brookes' DNF he may have been but this is racing and every point that comes your way is usually welcomed with open arms.
But I felt really sorry for James Ellison. Being taken out by a crashing Alastair Seeley at 100mph was rough enough and for a few seconds after the crash the entire pit lane held its collective breath while we waited for James to get up, he held his thigh as he sat in the gravel trap. It looked like the injury that's taken months to come back from had happened again. Double bugger.
Thankfully it wasn't broken, James was just battered by the fall, a fall which was nothing to do with anything he did himself. Unfair the tumble might have been but at least he wasn't badly hurt again, thanks in no small part to the carbon thigh protector made specially for him by Knox.
James was OK in his fall with a recovering broken leg, in MotoGP Valentino Rossi didn't fall off with his recovering broken leg. Valentino's weekend might look like it was better than James but consider that Ellison turned out for three Superbike races in total.
That Rossi bloke, yeah he's pretty tough but our lad Ellison, he's got some steel in his veins. And carbon wrapped around his thigh. Impressive stuff.