Friday was the strangest day ever, we’re so used to having two sessions one in the morning and one in the afternoon that sitting around all day until about 2-30pm or whenever it was we got out was almost more tiring than actually riding, it just didn’t seem right being there but not actually being out on track.
Some deemed the half an hour session on the short circuit a waste of time and Hopper for instance didn’t even bother venturing out but for me and my team this was a pretty big opportunity, after Oulton Park my crew chief Chris cameup with a completely new chassis setting that we needed to test, when I say completely different I mean completely different, now you could say that testing it on the short circuit wouldn’t really tell us much but the thing is we raced there earlier in the year so we knew what lap time was sensible and by using the half an hour session we’d lose no time should it be no good and be able to start Saturday with our more conventional setting so for us it was a win win situation, as it turned out the new setting felt pretty good, obviously with such a drastic change it was never going to be perfect straight away but there was definitely potential there, a few tweeks throughout the half hour session saw us finish up P2 I think or maybe P3 but my fastest lap was my last on tyres that had done the whole session showing that obviously we were making progress, I know Brands Indy is tight but to end up just 1 10th of a second off I felt pretty happy and confident that the following day we could make some bigger changes and really start heading in a good direction but little did I know…..
Without being negative I almost feel the less said about Saturday the better, it started, continued and ended being one of those days you just want to end as soon as possible before anything else went wrong!!
We had problem after problem in the two morning sessions and myguys worked incredibly hard to keep us in a position to get out on track, the big plus initially was that despite the fact we struggled to get more than two consecutive laps in at a time when we did hit the track we went immediately P1 so it wasn’t all bad!!
Having the race on the Saturday couldn’t possibly have worked out worse for us, I’m not kidding when I tell you that I’d maybe done 20 laps all day Saturday before the race and to make matters worse it started to spit with rain just before the race was due to get underway, because of this we got a 7 minute wet practice session which I decided to use to take a look around and understand the condition of the track, I’d decided that it was wet enough…just for wets and if the rain continued it was only going to get wetter so I went to the grid on wets, typically though the rain stopped, my guys got enough time to change the rear back to an intermediate but ran out of time to change the front, this was going to be a long old race now!!!
As the lights went out I got a pretty good start and went around the outside for the lead,
I lead for about 2 or 3 laps but with the rain stopped my front tyre felt like chewing gum, I knew a decent result was out of the question and that I was only going to go backwards so I pitted and used the change of tyres rule to try for a fast lap on slicks so that I’d start the 1st of Sundays races from a decent grid position, this worked out perfectly and we managed P3 for the following race, I couldn’t believe the amount of controversy my race caused though, a whole bunch of people kicked off because I re passed the podium battle, the problem was that after being in the pits to change tyres I had no idea who was in what position so I was simply trying to un lap myself and make up as much time as possible…
Unfortunately for me Sunday morning started off pretty much the same as Saturday had, ie with problems, we used the tyres from the day before in order to go beyond race distance so that we knew we’d be ok but I was hampered big time by chatter from the rear end of the bike, because we’d made some changes for the warm up we couldn’t be sure whether it was the changes, the track temperature, the surface after the heavy rain or what it was that was causing it so we went back to what we had the day before and crossed our fingers for the 1st race..
As the lights went out I got a pretty good start, Lascorz moved across on me which blocked me a little but nevertheless I exited turn one comfortably in 4th, after a lap or so Rutter put a move on Lascorz and pushed him a little wide so I managed to sneak up the inside at the exit of Paddock, a lap or so later I passed Rutter up into Druids before setting off after a fast starting Tommy Hill, I caught him in a couple of laps and felt more than comfortable riding behind him, I knew I could lap faster so I lined up a move and managed to pass him into Surtees at which point I chewed the screen, shut my eyes and pushed hard for a few laps, I did indeed lap faster but the problem was Tommy tagged on the back of me and no matter what I did I kept getting +0 on my pitboard,at that point I figured the thing to do was to settle down a little to preserve my rear tyre for a few laps, I dropped down to like mid to low 1.27’s with +0still on my board. With 7 laps to go I went for it again and immediately dropped to mid 1.26’s to try to break Tommy but again my board said +0, with about 3 or 4 laps to go Tommy put a move on me into Paddock but it was almost an exact replica of my move on him back in Easter and he immediately ran wide, I got straight back up the inside and pushed to the max again for the last few laps and managed to hold it to the chequered flag to take my first win since way back at Thruxton, I was absolutely delighted and felt it was just what my team deserved after such an incredibly difficult weekend so far!!!!
Post race celebration!!!
Post podium pose!!!
Rolling out towards the grid for the sighting lap of race 2 of the day something just didn’t feel right, I had in two new tyres and immediately I felt a bit of vibration from the right hand side of the rear tyre, I mentioned it to Chris on the grid and to be on the safe side we fired in a spare rear just to be sure. I got another reasonable start and slotted straight in P3 behind Tommy and Hopper and do you know what the most frustrating thing in the world is….knowing your doomed from there on in, the new rear tyre had exactly the same feeling like the one we took out, don’t get me wrong, Tommy set a better pace in the first few laps but initially I could keep up but as things got worse as the race wore on I knew it was going to be difficult to even stay on the podium let alone fight for another win, I pushed as hard as I could around the problem to try to keep Michael Laverty behind me and just about pulled it off to hang on for third, it’s really funny in a way though because when you won the first race you feel almost gutted about a third, I know I couldn’t possibly have done anymore with what I had though and feel pretty confident that we could’ve ran with Tommy and Hopper if we hadn’t of had the problem.
Looking forward now I’m hoping we’re going to be able to improve a little, I believe there’s some new parts coming for our bikes which should help in a few areas and should allow us to more comfortably follow the chassis setting route I mentioned earlier so I’m looking forward to that, I know we have two evenings testing coming up ahead of the next round at Cadwell park so hopefully we’ll be able to make some positive steps there.
In a way I guess I’m pretty happy with our weekends work, it certainly felt good to win again for the first time in ages, I’m happy that we’re the first ones through to the shootout, I’m happy that we may have found a good direction with the bike but above all that I’m a bit annoyed that something so simple and so out of our control can once again have such a big effect on the outcome of a race, with this shootout being run over 6 races lets keep our fingers crossed that this issue doesn’t arise again!!!
Thanks as ever for all the support track side, thanks to my HM Plant Honda team, and I hope you enjoyed both the racing and my take on it all in this blog!!!
Take it easy, Shakey #67
