Knockhill!!

Well that was Knockhill for another year guys and girls and I’d just like to thank whoever ordered the weather for the weekend because despite the forecast looking particularly grim we didn’t end up like drowned rats on race day!!

We had a pretty good first day on track and somewhat unbelievably we got two pretty much dry sessions, there was one small rain shower but it didn’t really affect us too much at all, we were fastest in free practice one and then just pipped in the second one so we had an idea on what we needed to improve for qualifying and we felt good going forward, the only problem was that we needed at least one more full dry session as pretty much everything you do with your bike chassis or settings wise is devised form your current “dry” settings, my team had done a great job and I was looking forward to the weekend already despite the small air of uncertainty settings wise, we knew we’d get it nailed but like I said it needed to be fully dry and I needed to push 110% to confirm a few things.

Qualifying went ok, by ok I mean we just missed out on the front row, which was a bit annoying really as we were fourth, generally at pretty much every other circuit you have 4 bikes to a row but 4^th at Knockhill meant the 2^nd row, something I never actually realised until I did a bit of surfing that evening in the motorhome and read on a couple of websites, to think I was pretty happy thinking 4^th meant front row, I even did a big wheelie over the start finish line, what a dipstick!! 

Fortunately for me the Sunday morning warm up session was dry, that was luck in itself though as whilst I was sat eating my breakfast it started spitting a little with rain, I sat there staring out of the motorhome window saying words to the effect of “please sod off rain” :-) Being dry we got the chance to try some settings that we’d wanted to try all weekend and despite the fact we used old tyres from qualifying we ended the session fastest and matched my all out lap time form the qualifying session on new tyres so things were looking a bit more promising for the race, well, if they were dry that was!!!

The first race was tough, I mean proper tough, being such an almost ridiculously short lap circa 49 seconds we have to do 30 laps per race and the thing with Knockhill is there isn’t one split second where you get to actually rest on the bike, you’re constantly heaving the thing from one side to the other or fighting to either A) stop yourself going over the handlebars under hard braking or B) stop the bike from throwing you off the back under hard acceleration, bear in mind a little food for thought our Superbikes will accelerate from 0-60mph in 2.5 seconds and the only reason it takes that long is the risk of flipping one!!!!

I got a good start from the 2^nd row and by about lap 3 or 4 I’d taken the lead, It isn’t easy when you have 30 laps with +0 on you pit board but the Rapid Solicitors Kawasaki worked really well, throughout the race the most I could get the gap up to was +0.5 but then it would come down the lap later so there was no rest. At the end of the day though you only need to win by the minimum amount possible and to take the win by just over a second was testament to the job the team did for me, a win is what we were after so we are all well happy with that.

To be honest after such a good first race we’d have been stupid to change too much on the bike, we went with exactly the same settings and I figured I’d try to get a start again then just see how things panned out. One of the reasons we’d kept the same settings from the first race was because in some ways I was surprised by the outright lap times from the first race, I actually felt if needed I’d be able to maintain a slightly faster pace for race two so we just rolled with it, both Michael and Tommy had a strong pace initially and I sat in third thinking right you boys can do the leading for a bit in this one, I’ll just follow happily for a bit, however about 10 laps in I noticed Michael Laverty looking particularly keen to lead and at this point I was behind Tommy, Michael got his head down and to be honest it took me a lap too long to pass Tommy who’s incredibly strong there anyway and by the time I did Michael had pulled about a second or so on me and with the circuit being such a short tight lap it’s almost impossible to catch back up, I desperately wanted another win and pushed as hard as I could but in the end second is better than crashing out and I was happy to come away with some more podium credits for our championship and the top points scorer for the weekend so I have to say a massive thanks to the Rapid Solicitors Kawasaki team for all their hard work, fingers crossed it’ll be more of the same next time out at Oulton park, maybe see you there, take it easy, Shakey #67