Thruxton!!!

I've got to admit I'd been looking forward to coming to Thruxton ever since we left Croft, I mean leaving a circuit that I'd never been on the podium at and one that the team struggled at last year having built up a lead in race 1 and then winning the second race filled me with confidence heading to a track that A I love and B the team won at last year!

Riding here is a real cool experience, the place is so fast generally and also has the fastest corner in British racing, aptly named "Church", we go from flat out in 5th back one gear, a dab of brakes then flick in, the exit kind of opens out which results in some full on maybe 130mph slides, I love it!

Our 1st session went really well, I got out on track and literally within 3 laps I set a time that only I bettered ever so slightly for the whole 45 minutes session, Tommy Hill got closest towards the end of the session but I still managed to remain just under half a second clear which was a right result, we managed to work through a few little bits and pieces too throughout the session in order to give us some direction for the afternoon session.

For the second session we got out and tried some new tires, I pushed quite hard initially and busted out a good few laps straight away, the laps felt pretty good but my lap timer didn't come up for the first two or three laps, I saw P1 on my board again but had no idea how fast I'd gone, it turned out at that point that I'd managed to go nearly three quarters of a second faster than the morning session. We had a plan in place for the second session though which included trying a couple of rear shocks as well as different ride heights etc, we managed to work through all the stuff we had and ran 2nd nearly the whole session to Tommy but not even a 10th of a second away, towards the end though I used another race tyre and managed to pull a few more tenths despite not managing a particularly good lap i managed to pull just over a quarter of a second clear.

Sunday mornings free practice went pretty good, we started the session on a used rear tyre from the day before in order to check our rhythm and to get an idea of how the bike was going to behave once we had getting towards race distance on it and that went pretty well, I put in a new soft rear at the end of the session as we needed to see if the soft one would help us outright lap time wise and it seemed to, the only problem was I towed around James Westmoreland and he pulped me to the top of the time sheets but by less than a tenth so it was all good.

For the 1st of the qualifying sessions we had a plan, we knew that just one average lap on new tires would be enough to get into the top 20 so I set off out to do the lap, as it was the bike felt real good on new race tires I did the fastest 1sector of the whole weekend on route towards the final chicane, the lap had been good and I knew that I could pull in straight afterwards as we had a few things we wanted to try with the bike before we put the softer tyre in for sessions two and three, however, I ran up into the chicane a tiny bit quick and had to make a pretty big deal of the left, I pulled it back well though and straightened the bike up for a strong exit to try to recover the time, the next thing I know the bike was properly sideways at which point it was going to be more luck than judgment as to whether it straightened out but at that point the traction cut quite hard due to the slide which snapped the bike back and sent my skywards, I landed with a bit of abang and properly knocked the wind out of myself for a minute or so, I hurtmy knee and had bashed my right wrist but other than that and the winding I felt ok ish, quite fortunate really asthe last time I crashed at that corner back in 2000 on the SP 1 I broke my back!!!!!

That night I went to bed pretty early for me, I'm terrible if I do that, if I try to get to bed like half hour or so earlier than I have in the last few days I end up sat staring at the ceiling and that night was no exception, bloody half past two I finally fell asleep, gutted!!!!

Morning warm up went pretty good to be honest, It was important for me to get out there and get amongst it straight away, despite the rain in the air I went straight into the 1.15's which is good and managed a run of very low 1.16's despite a visor problem whereby i used a dry conditions visor with no Pinlock or Foggy mask which meant I eventually had to abort mission as I couldn't see a thing!!!!

Lining up at the very back of the grid was a bit weird, the conditions from warm up had got worse pretty much to the point where it was nowhere near wet enough for full wets but was to wet for slicks but as we sat on the grid the rain came a bit heavier so the organizers gave us an 8 minute wet practice instead of starting the race.

After the wet practice the weather continued to close in making the tyre choice relatively simple, I went with wets front and rear, a couple of people gambled on an intermediate rear and just before we got going it might have been the way but with more rain due any second we went safe!

Being on the last row of the grid there was a fair bit of spray as soon as we got going, I never got a bad start but I couldn't see a thing and being on the outside of turn 1 Ididn't want to risk running around the outside of some of the tail enders only for one of them to make a mistake, run wide and then take me out, it's always a difficult balance between making as much progress as possible with the least risk possible, once rolling though and through the first couple of turns I started picking people off, the biggest problem was vision though, on the way through the pack I got so much spray which somehow got up inside my helmet and pretty much made seeing where I was going absolutely impossible, I'm not even joking, if you see me shaking my head on TV in the race it was to try to get the moisture to blow one way or another but it didn't work at all, it was so frustrating because I was riding crap because I couldn't be sure where I was on track, my HM Plant Honda was easily good enough to win on with the wet setting we had but I couldn't see to use the bike to my advantage, I couldn't even see my pit board let alone the numbers on it and the first time I realized I was getting near to the end of the race was when I sawthe big yellow board with a black cross that denotes last lap, at that point I thought Christ I need to get my finger out and pass Rutter, I realized there and then I was out of time to challenge Michael Laverty but I thought 2nd was on the cards.

I got a real good run out of church on the last lap and got passed Rutter and tried to hold a tight line up into the chicane, the only trouble was with no one in front to use as a braking marker I had no idea when to brake and I actually braked a bit early and ran into the chicane far too slow, Rutter squeezed around me and I figured I'd square of the last corner and out drag him to the line, the trouble with him is though he's to bloody clever, he exited the last turn using the Ducati's traction control but kept going right squeezing me in towards the wall meaning I had to lean further and struggled to accelerate on the side of the tyre, I stoodmy bike up and got a bit of a wheelie and lost drive towards the line so Michael popped me and got 2nd, I was more than happy anyway though as coming from 33rd to 3rd was pretty cool and not only that I got the fastest lap of the race so I would start race 2 from Pole Position anyway!!!!

I told my guys after the race that my bike was plenty good enough to win and knew that would be possible if I could get out front, ride smoothly and use my own lines rather than trying to pass people here, there and everywhere using up too much of my rear tyre, I was pretty pumped if not a little nervous for race 2, the real good thing though was that the rain had continued and the track was definitely fully wet!!!!

As the lights went out I got a pretty good start, 2nd into turn one behind Rutter, I made my move as soon as we got out the back section of the track and then pulled the pin, I put in a few really clean laps and immediately built up a bit of a lead, once I saw that I pushed a bit harder for a few laps to get a good gap which for a few laps was around 4 seconds, I was riding totally within myself and felt real good, my bike was once again perfect, I was riding thinking blimey how can this gap keep getting bigger when I'm not pushing, I came around on about lap 6 and saw the gap had gone up to 7 seconds and at that point I thought right let's just maintain this pace, not push at all, enjoy the race and see what happens, as it was the gap just kept going up and up and up so I just rode it home, by the end I think I won the race by just under 11 seconds which felt absolutely fantastic!!!!!,

I knew that if I needed to I could of probably lapped at least half a second if not more faster without laying it on the line so I felt on top of the world, a third and a win after a big crash Saturday afternoon and starting from last place on the grid in the first race was mega!!!

After all that's happened this weekend something to me which is almost as important as the results was how much as a team my side of the garage learnt about my bike, we tried a few new things setting wise and got some really useful information which I'm hoping we can take forward for the rest of the season, I'd like to say a massive thank you to my HM Plant team and also to all the fans who've once again been fantastic, just a quick one to end on now and it's a MASSIVE get well and get back soon to Stuart "Ratboy" Easton.

Talk to you all again soon, take it easy, Shakey #67

Croft, lows and highs!!!!

I’m sure in my last blog to you guys I explained that after the difficulties we faced at Oulton Park during round 2 that my team booked us a testat Darley Moor, it’s a track I’d never been to before but the team assured me that it was absolutely perfect for the electronics work we needed to do.

I’ve also told you that Kiyo and I have an uncannily similar set up which has helped us work through things quicker throughout winter testing, well this test was no different, as it stands we’re both looking for exactly the same thing fromour bikes and with two different things needing to be tested rather than both having a stab at both Kiyo did some work on engine braking whilst I did throttle connection/power delivery, throughout the day we both made various changes to find a good setting and then I endedup using Kiyo’s engine braking setting and he used my throttle, 2 good steps forward and two things that we hoped and crossed our fingers would transfer across well set up wise for the upcoming 3^rd round of the championship at Croft.

I have to admit that I wasn’t especially looking forward to Croft, I’ve never really had that much luck there what with crashes and bikes getting stolen etc and I’ve never really gone that well there full stop, I was running 3^rd there in 2008 which was all I needed to do to take the title and then Tom Sykes rammed into me at the final hairpin which cost me the championship that day, that said, although the HM Plant team struggled there a littlelast year my engineer explained the reasons why and generally their results there have been strong, not only that it’s HM Plant’s local race, not HM Plant as in the team’s base I mean as in the race closest to the sponsor themselves, pressure’s on then ha ha ha!!!

Croft is a funny old place set up wise,you can make your bike real good in the slower sections but struggle big time in the fast part, you can makeit mega in the fast part but then have it horrendous over the bumps of which there’s a fair few at Croft,basically it takes a hell of a lot of compromise to find an ideal setting.

We worked really hard from the word go at Croft, in the first session on the tires from the race weekend before so that we could identify any problems faster rather than masking them with new tires that gave good grip.

One thing we did spend some time working on was riding with some of the electronics turned off to get a more direct feeling with what the bike was doing so that we could work on the chassis setting in order to try to fix problems rather than use electronics to mask stuff and that helped a fair bit in the beginning although one of the biggest problems throughout the first day was the wind which was pretty full on!!!

We ended up working through a rake of stuff and knew exactly where we were in terms of race tires but setting wise whilst the bike was good for the races we needed some mechanical grip, that was the one thing we were suffering with a bit, however we got through the first round of qualifying on our race spec tires anyway so we knew we could improve a fair chunk for the final two to get ourselves up near the front. Superpole 2 passed without any drama so we were through to the final session, the only drama was that at that point a fairly heavy shower of rain came which made he track wet, no normally this wouldn’t be a problem at all but as it stands no one other than maybe Kiyo and Rutter had actually ridden their bikes in the wet yet here we were with no wet practice whatsoever expected to go out and qualify in the most important session!!!

There were some talks in the pit lane with a few riders and team bosses along with the organizers about what to do but the decision to carry on was taken whenthe shower seemed to pass, I know some of the riders including me weren’t happy to go into that final session having never ridden our bikes in the wet with no wet practice but fortunately the track dried real quick and was pretty much full dry for the final session.

I got out on track with Dan Linfoot about 4 or 5 seconds up the track in front of me and he was chasing Michael Laverty so whilst they were a bit far to use as a target I could at least see what was going on up the track, I used this as best I could and put in my fastest lap of the weekend to go P1 so my 2^nd Pole position of the year which I was pretty happy about, I gave Dan a quick thank you hand shake for being my marker after!! ;-)

Morning warm up passed and showed us that the final changes we’d made to the bike the day before and a couple of small things Chris had worked on overnight had worked so all we’d have to do now was wait to see what would happen weather wise.

Working better after our overnight changes!!

After warm up the rain came so we got a 8 minute session to try our bikes in the wet but to be honest it wasn’t really wet enough to get a good feeling, we ended up 3^rd in that session anyway so it wasn’t really a drama, now the weather job would determine everything, hopefully it’d be either one or the other, wet or dry…

A word in my ear from race director Stuart Higgs

Typically for the race the drizzle came, it’s the worst situation in the world as a rider, sat on a bike on a track that’s neither wet nor dry not knowing weather to run wets and bank on rain or dry tires and hope the weather doesn’t get any worse but I made me choice, slicks!!!! We set of on the warm up laps and as we pulled up to the line the organizers delayed the start because of imminent rain incoming, I decided to still stick with slicks and quite a few of the guys changed to wets, I knew I needed to get going as quickly as possible whilst the rain was at bay and pulled the pin immediately, I got the hole shot and pulled away from the pack as quick as possible, I busted out a few fast laps then tried to settle in to a good rhythm,I could see and almost smell the weather coming in but I had around a 4 second lead so I just tried to be strong in the drier parts and be careful in the wetter bits, then as Iexited onto the start finish straight I had a problem with my bike and that was me, my race done, it was really unlucky because in all the riding I’ve done on my HM Plant Honda the thing has never missed a beat so to have my first mechanical whilst leading a race was a bit of a bummer but it’s been a weapon all season and all through testing so I mustn’t grumble, my boys do a good job of makingit one of the fastest bikes on the grid and if they could time when it might break it would never happen full stop they’re that on top of things.

My boys worked flat out in between the 2 races to get the engine changed in the bike ready for the 2^nd race and on the sighting lap everything felt good so now it was fingers crossed, the conditions were at least dry and the only slight bummer was that because of my lap time in the 1^st race I dropped from Pole to P4 for the second race.

I didn’t get the best of starts to be honest, I just missed the jump ever so slightly, it’s the most frustrating thing in the world too because as soon as it happens you know you’re going to end up in the middle of all sorts of nonsense through thefirst few turns, luckily for me it all panned out ok, P3 through the first couple of turns then P2 exiting the chicane after a pass on Hopper, Gary Mason was P1 and I sat watching him through the first lap, on the run down to turn 1 I passed Gary then pretty much straight away the course car came out due to the incident between John Kirkham and Michael Laverty, as the lights went out on the car I knew that all the guys behind would expect me to go immediately on the exit of the hairpin so rather than nailing the exit I rode steady on the exit and then pinned it hoping to catch the others napping and it seemed to work, I pretty quickly built up a good lead from there with a few fast laps and from then on in I just watched my pit board, whenever it dropped below 4 seconds I’d push for a lap or two then check my board to me sure I’d done enough to keep the gap where I wanted it.

Controlling or trying to at least ;-)

Exiting the last turn I switched all the electronics off as I wanted to celebrate my win with a wheelie and if you recall I tried to celebrate the same at Brands Hatch and the electronics cut the wheelie, this time it was perfect, a stand up wheelie the length of the straight!!!!!

Celebrating on top of the podium!!!

I’d like to say a massive thanks to my HM Plant team for all their hard work, a big thank you to all the fans there and finally I’d like to breath a sigh of relief after finally getting a podium at the Croft circuit, it’s been a while coming there and there’s no better place than the top step!!!

So that’s the race that I was least looking forward to out of the way now and I think we were rewarded well for all our hard work, Thruxton is next on the calendar, a track I love, my HM Plant Honda is fast and with the continued hard work of the team I hope we can step up on that top step maybe two times there!!!

Thank you all very much for your support and we’ll catch up again real soon, take it easy, Shakey #67

Oulton park, round 2!!!

After the weekend we had at Brands Hatch I honestly wanted to drive straight up to Oulton park that evening to continue riding, in a way Brands actually felt like the 1^st time I’d actually properly ridden my HM Plant Honda, sure I’ve done hundreds of kilometres testing it but racing’s just some thing else and I enjoyed it a lot!!!!

When we got to Oulton I went out on the pushbike for a good few laps and then myself, Jason (my team mate) and a few of his buddies headed out for a bit of a pedal around the local area, we soon decided to ride to Chester and found a nice little coffee shop for a quick break before heading back to the track and boxing off the ride with a few more laps of the track, I tell you something that place doesn’t seem half as hillyon a bike with an engine ha ha ha!!!

Little did me and my team realise the following day just how muchof a shock we were going to be in for the minute we set out on track on the race bike, I love Oulton park anyway and watching Kiyo wrap up his championship there last year was one of the things that convinced me the HM Plant team was the one for me this year, however, aftera couple of laps to settle in I immediately started to push but saw my position in the session gradually going further and further down, in the interests of not dragging on forever with each session etc I’ll tell you straight, we had issues, BIIIGGGGG issues, we couldn’t stop because of our engine breaking strategy playing up, we couldn’t go due to problems electrical and basically just couldn’t be consistent full stop with it.

A little bit off line!!!

Both Kiyo and I worked on various ideas to try to help us but we were in such a pickle even after hours and hours of studying data etc that come qualifying there really wasn’t any point whatsoever in using a soft tyre, in a way you could say that qualifying 7^thon a race tyre wasn’t bad but let me tell you that was by riding what I had with my eyes shut for one lap and was never going to go race distance, not in a million years!!

Using all the track and trying hard!!

For morning warm up my crew chief Chris had come up with some ideas which made the bike a fair bit easier to ride, basically itfelt likeevery aspect of the bike was fighting the next aspect so it was a constant conflict but Chris sussed the job out and we went a bit better in that session so whilst I was far from thinking we’ll nail these races no problem but I did feel a bit more at ease.

In deep discussion with my crew chief Chris and Ohlins man Richard..

A bit more on it!!

As the lights went out for race 1 I was praying for a Brands hatch start but didn’t quite get it, it wasn’t terrible but it wasn’t great either, I realised fairly early on that I was in a bit of a pickle because I was really struggling to get the bike stopped and because of it overtaking was a night mare, being overtaken on the brakes was an even bigger one!! Towards the end of the race though when the bike had burnt off some fuel and got a bit lighter I started to be able to make some passes, I had a bit of a coming together with Michael Rutterwhich wasn’t really necessary and nearly took us both down, I’d managed to pass Michael on the brakes on the way down towards Hizzy’s but he let the brakes and leaned on me, I had nowhere to go other than over the kerbs on the inside and ran off the track narrowly avoiding taking us both down, that cost me a load of time and ultimately probably a podium, I hauled my way back up to 4^th and ended off less than a second off the podium, I was gutted not to make it to the podium but at the same time highly relieved that I’d got a 4^th, at one stage before qualifying I was just about managing to stay in the top 15!!!!!!

Race two went slightly better, we made some small changes to the bike so that I could attack from the beginning and the changes seemed to work, I did get passed a few times after making a few small mistakes but it was because I spent both races riding on and sometimes too far over the limit, luckily though race two panned out slightly better when I managed to nip past Kiyo on the final lap to claim 3^rd place, all things considered though I guess after the way the weekend had gone I should have been doing somersaults withthose results not being unhappy, one thing’s for sure though I definitely gave it 100%!!!!

A little bit happier!!!

We had a big team debrief after the races and the team immediately booked us a test at Darley Moor to try to get to grips with the electronics, it was 100% necessary so I couldn’t wait to get back on the bike away from a race meeting to do some work!!

Massive thanks to Chris, my boys and the whole HM Plant Honda team, it was a very, very difficult weekend at times but we all stuck together, worked very hard and came away with two not terrible results, fingers crossed things will get back to normal next time out and we can get back to winning!!!

Thanks everyone for all your support, talk to you all soon, Shakey #67

Ding ding, rrroooouuunnnnddddd 1, so far so good!!

Hey guys and girls, i know this isn't exactly what you might call a regular update but i'm doing far better than the gap between the last two!!!! So here we are right now and like the title for this blog says so far so good, well, ish anyway!!!

I think the last blog ended somewhere around the end of the Cartagena tests in Spain where we had some BIG engine brake problems and a pretty aggressive throttle connection going on, well, after we got back to the UK the team worked real hard to rectify the problems and pretty soon after we had a test up at Cadwell park, it was pretty amusing because everybody talks about how narrow Cadwell is but the night before Jason and i went on a bit of a training ride on the push bikes and i was saying to him "do you know what, this place doesn't seem half as narrow as i remember..." i soon changed my opinion the next morning however, the HM Plant Fireblade ate the straight up so fast that i arrived at Park corner and thought shit where's the rest of the track ;-)!!!

The Cadwell test went really well, we spent the whole time working on the new (old) engine braking system and more time working on general electronic stuff and also ran through a few different chassis settings which was pretty interesting, all in all it was a real good test and enabled us to breath a hugh sigh of relief going forward!!

A few days after the test however it all went wrong again, at the WSB round inPhillip Island the F.I.M decided on a rule change which meant we could no longer use the engine braking system that the team used in 2010 and at Cadwell so we'd have to revert back to something along the lines of what we used in Spain...This wasn't good news!!

A couple of weeks later was the BSB test at the new Snetterton 300 circuit and when i say we started from scratch i mean we started from scratch with a completely new electronics package but due to the time constraints the team only had enough stuff for one bike which ended up being mine so i had a whole rake of stuff to try to work through whilst trying to learn the new layout too, it made for a busy day but we made good progress, Kiyo rode my bike for a session in the afternoon and continued working in exactly the same direction i'd been going so when i got to ride my bike for the final session it was almost like 2 steps better, the step i'd asked for after my last ride plusthe step further in the correct direction that Kiyo had gone so good news!!!!

After Snetterton that was it in terms of testing before the race season finally got underway and we rocked up at Brands feeling in pretty good shape, sure there was going to be work to do because there always is but we at least had a good base plus we had the added benefit of a four day meeting so an extra couple of test sessions in effect..

Practice passed and went ok, as did qualifying, in fact you could probably say qualifying went pretty damn good, i got Pole for race 1 with the fastest ever 2 wheeled lap around the place!!!

I'd been pretty concerned about the starts of the races as i've practised a few times and my times haven't really been that good but i shouldn't have worried as when the lights went out for the 1st race i pulled off the big holeshot, i can't remember the last time i did that!! I lead the race for a few laps but tried to do so at a pretty steady pace, we'd done enough laps in practice to know that we'd be strong at the end of the races so i was feeling pretty confident, a few laps in Michael Laverty passed me but when i saw i could very comfortably run his pace behind i thought perfect i'll just sit here and wait for a good chunk of the 30 laps to pass then make my move, then following him out of Clearways i saw his bike lose grip and start to come around on him, it was almost like watching in slow motion, it went sideways compressed the rear shock and then fired him straight out of the front, i managed to avoid him but lost a bit of time doing so, i saw out of the corner of my eye Tommy Hill run off the track and clip Michael and hoped they'd both be ok and then as i got going Ratboy (Stuart Easton) came pass and literally just after the course car came out, i was checking behind during the course car to see who was where and knew i'd have to pull the pin immediately as soon as the car went in, that's exactly what i did,

i passed Ratboy and got my head down, i managed to pull a 3 second gap and from there on in i managed to just cruise home to take the 1st win of the year, happy days!!!

Race 2 was a similar affair, i got another fantastic start, got the holeshot, lead for a bout 10 laps or so,

Tommy Hill passed so i sat behind with exactly the same plan as race one sussing out where we were strong and then with about 3 laps to go i got a pretty good drive off Clearways and an opportunity to pass came up running into Paddock, i dived to the inside thinking yessss, perfect, but as i ran in i thought noooo not perfect, not perfect at all, i ran in a little hot on the front and drifted wide, as soon as i got back on track Kiyo came past and i lost a bit of momentum due to my mistake, i got back on the back of the guys but had to settle for third, hardly a disaster i know but not as good as two wins ;-)!!!!!

We had a big long debrief straight after the races and talked through some bits and pieces and I left Brands in a real good mood and well excited about getting out at Oulton park, I couldn’t wait!!! One last thing I’ll quickly mention is an apology from me to all of the fans that queued up to see me at Pitlane walkabout, I had to be taken away real early to do a quick PR job for the team then rush down to get ready for race 1 so if you were one of the people queuing like I said I apologise!! Thank you all so much for all the cheers and support throughout the weekend, long may it continue!!! More to come very soon… Take it easy, Shakey #67