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
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