WE ARE THE CHAMPIONS!!!!!!!!!!!!!

It seems that every time I write one of these Blogs for you guys it starts with a sorry for taking so long sentence etc etc so I feel it entirely appropriate to start this one the same lol!!! Sorry it has taken me a week or so to write this but I have to confess I was more than a little fragile all day Monday after Brands it has to be said and to be honest the rest of the week has been a bit of a blur ever since, to be fair though it was for a good reason – I won the 2012 MCE Insurance British Superbike Championship for the third time winning all three races in the final weekend!!!

After the penultimate round a couple of weeks ago at Silverstone I just got away for a bit with my wife Petra and the kids to the Czech Republic and had a fantastic time chilling out for a few days, then though as soon as we got back it was bang on the training ready to be in the best possible shape come Brands Hatch ready for the final Showdown. I completely avoided the track for as long as possible as I’d really chilled out yet I’d really pushed hard training wise and I wanted to spend as much time at home chilled as possible as the weekend ahead was fairly important to be fair!!! Thursday came though and with it a day of filming and media interviews etc which kept me pretty busy and then it was game on!

Friday started a bit iffy as the track was drying out after some rain earlier on so I waited a bit before heading out, bided my time then headed out to just do some laps to bed the brakes in without going too crazy. I followed Josh Brookes my main title rival for a lap or so and he was definitely hanging it out, with the track being wet/damp in places he was being way to brave for a Friday morning for my liking because those kind of conditions are the easiest in the world to fall down in but I didn’t want to risk a stupid crash in the first free practice session so I thought you crack on mate!!! As it was the track pretty much dried out by the end of the session and I finished the session more than comfortably fastest so it was all good!!

The afternoon session was about spot on so the boys in the Rapid Solicitors Kawasaki garage decided to try a few things on the bike that we’d thought about after the August round, we had some ideas that we thought would help suspension wise but with only a 40 minute session when my initial feeling wasn’t quite so good we reverted back and concentrated on the direction we were working in previously. 

We knew qualifying was going to be important and we did a good job in practice so much so that we went faster in the third practice session than we did in the qualifying, however we’d done that good of a job concentrating on being sure we’d be strong over a full race duration that my outright lap time was only good enough for P2 on the grid for race 1. We knew it was going to be three long, hard races and that Josh, Alex (Lowes) and the others would be up there so I went out knowing that I simply had to treat each race like all the others this year and get out there, get amongst it and fight for wins, nine points wasn’t much of a buffer when there were 75 up for grabs!!

In the first race I got a really good start, a really, really good start, probably one of my best this year in fact, I lead and initially started with a pretty steady pace, it wasn’t because I wasn’t trying just that the lap times weren’t that good and because of it my pit board kept saying +0 for what felt like forever, I tried to control things for a bit and got my head down and a gap came so I just concentrated real hard on managing it, then to make things even more tricky it started to drizzle with rain, I thought 'oh no, what next’ so I tried to keep going as it wasn't that bad in the beginning, I knew that we had an 18 lap race and that 2/3rds race distance needed to be covered before the race would be declared a result so I was trying to work out in my head how many more laps we needed to complete so that we wouldn’t have to start again, on the final lap before the red flag it got real bad, I knew I had to get it stopped as it was really slippery and I hoped we’d done enough laps for it to be declared a result and fortunately it was. It was a great result for the Rapid Solicitors Kawasaki team but I knew we needed to do it all again in the final two races on Sunday.

On Sunday I knew mathematically I could win the championship in the second race, I needed to win and Josh had to finish lower than 2nd but hell, it wasn’t going to be an easy one. It was a tough race and it was a bit frustrating to have two safety cars intervene, the second one was worse as it slowed it down a bit too much and the tyres lost a bit of temperature so when I started to get going again the bike felt a bit loose and I thought the last thing I needed was to throw it down the road. I settled down and watched the gap and tried my best to maintain it. Funnily enough before that I’d got into a bit of a pickle because for obvious reasons I have certain names of riders on my board, but then I had another number appear on one line and then I realised it was Barry (Burrell). I knew if Josh was third it would be job done, so I hoped he stayed there but in the end Josh and Michael got ahead of Barry meaning the Championship would go right to the final race. I would have liked to have wrapped the job up in up in that 2^nd race but knew also that the last race was going to be fun for us as baring a disaster.

The final race of the season was amazing. I started 5^th on the grid so 2^nd row which wasn’t ideal but again I got a fantastic start and slotted in behind Josh, he set a real fast pace and following him was absolutely perfect as I just used him as a reference, I was fairly sure that the pace he was doing he wouldn’t be able to maintain right until the end of the race so I just hung in there and enjoyed the ride, I was happy following and to a certain degree I was happy with 2nd but at the same time I knew I wanted to win the championship in style and the red mist came down and that was it, I knew I needed to go for it, I saw my chance on the penultimate lap after seeing Josh starting to lose a bit of grip and that was it, bang straight into the lead. To cross the line and win the race, the championship in front of such an amazing crowd left me speechless for once!!! I am ecstatic. It would be cruel not to have tried for the win as it has been such an incredible season, in those last three or four laps I kept thinking of all the hard work my boys have done and I thought right lets do this!! I was really emotional. I have to thank everyone, the team, my family, the fans for what has been a real rollercoaster season and to the other guys, we have had some great races this year.

Like I’ve said before the final round, I want to become the most successful rider ever in the championship and last weekend I moved a step closer to achieving that goal. All I can say was that it was an incredible feeling and I have to thank everyone for their support, 2 more race wins sees me become the all time most successful BSB rider in history which is cool but whether or not we stay in the championship remains to be seen as my boss is incredibly keen for me to take part in the Moto GP championship so we need to sit down at some point and discuss my future together.


Right now what I desperately need is time to recover from the party, to chill out, take a nice holiday somewhere sunny then see what the next step will be.

Thank you all so much for your support, I’ll keep you posted when we get some news but for now, kick back, relax and enjoy the last few rounds of Moto GP, that’s my plan so lets see where we go from here, take it easy,

Shakey #67

Silverstone..

To say that I arrived at Silverstone fired up is a bit of an understatement, 5 days previous I'd arrived at Assen not really knowing where we were at whatsoever and came away with a 1st and a second place finish, I don't want to keep repeating myself but if you'd said that would be the case the week before I would've laughed at you!!!

Having Monday off after the race to relax and let my achey body chill out a bit was the perfect medicine, then Tuesday Wednesday hard sessions in the gym and the swimming pool had me feeling good and more than ready for the challenge ahead, to make things even more positive I'd already competed in the Silverstone 200 races so I had a bit of time over my rivals there, we meant business!!!!

Let's start with Thursday afternoon, MSV arranged for the 6 title fighters to get to drive around the circuit, the full circuit not the little ones in their Nissan GTR's for 20 odd minutes each which was a cool experience, I really enjoyed my time in the car and it put me in an even better mood for the upcoming weekend!!

Friday morning though and things started to go a bit pear shaped, I literally managed an outlap on my bike when the dash fired some warning lights at me that I hadn't seen before so I had to pull straight in, the guys got to the bottom of the problem but by the time they had some light drizzle came down and pretty much ended everyone's session.

Friday afternoon was where it really went wrong and I mean Really went wrong, obviously having only done an outlap in the previous session we started on the same set of tyres, I did an outlap then started my what I call my build up lap, turn 1, fine, into the next section fast left, fast right, tighter left, tight right all no problem at all but then immediately I changed the final change of direction for the run out onto the back straight and no sooner had I leant left again the rear of the bike snapped round and threw me up in the air, I kind of managed to stay on the bike but with the slide happening so early in the corner I was on top of the thing but heading diagonally towards the tyre wall at a pretty rapid rate of knots, there was no way I was going to A get stopped or B get turned enough so I had to bail out, I actually came off reasonably unscathed, we weren't sure if I'd broken a bone in my hand as it swelled up pretty good but the medics took good care of that but the bike, well, that was a whole different matter, in a match between the tyre wall and the bike it was most definitely tyre wall 1 bike 0...

Saturday morning I got out and was really happy just to manage a flying lap, bearing in mind the boys had done 2.07's the day before my first decent flyer being a 2.10 or something daft wasn't cool at all, nevertheless we worked real hard through the session and continued improving and finally got down to a sensible enough time to end the session well in the top 5, far. From happy but a lot happier than I was at the beginning of the session.

For the first of the qualifying practices I got a few laps tucked in behind Alex Lowes, he was riding real good and dragged me round a whole bunch quicker than I'd been on my own so big thanks to him for that, then it was on to Q2 and finally Q3, I managed by far my quickest time of the weekend in Q3 but unfortunately it was only good enough for P5 for race one.

After the qualifying sessions we decided on a plan to try for the morning warm up session, sure the track temperature would be down but we needed to improve our bike so it was worth trying, the only problem was that upon pre warming the bike before the warm up session the bike developed a problem which ended up being one that the team just couldn't fix in time, they changed absolutely everything over as quick as they could from an electronics point of view and still the problem was there so they had to result to an engine change meaning we completely missed the warm up session and our chance to try the changes we wanted, it was too big a gamble to go straight into the races with the setting We wanted to try so we reverted back to qualifying spec and crossed our fingers.

I had a plan for race 1, not that it was going to be easy but regardless I had a plan and that was to sit on Alex's seat unit for as long as possible, he'd certainly shown everyone a clean pair of heels most of the weekend so I figured it wasn't a bad plan but like I said executing it would be a whole different matter. I got a good start in the race and didn't take long at all to get close to the front, the pace was weird because it was pretty slow so I rode accordingly trying my best to preserve my tyre for the latter stages of the race, I knew that some of the guys would run the harder compound and make that work but we'd had no time at all to do anything with it so we had to run the soft and try to be careful... Those thoughts quite obviously weren't ringing in my ears when having took the lead I ran way too deep into the stadium section and ran off track, what a dick, basically i'd got real good drive off the corner before and having got the lead was keen to try to stretch it a bit so I broke a tiny bit too late got real crossed up, had to let off the brake and then ran real wide and off track dropping myself down to 6th or 7th in the process,I got my ass in gear sharp ish and started picking the guys off again before a last lap battle with Michael Laverty to finally claim 2nd which I was happy enough with, especially as it gave me back the lead in the championship.

For race two we made some small changes to the bike especially to help the rear of the bike which I was struggling with a bit in the latter stages of race 1, it was kind of tricky because in some ways the problems needed opposite soloutions to fix them and kind of fixing one would make the other worse and vice versa but we hoped that overall they would improve the package, we had set the 2nd fastest time in race 1 so we started P2 on the grid, I got a great start and lead into turn 1 and stayed there for a bit, I had a few backwards and forward moments with Michael Laverty and a couple were particularly close, it was a little bit frustrating because Michael was strong in a few places but overall I could lap faster and I was a bit concerned that maintaining a slower pace would enable a load more riders to tag on with the front guys.
Later in the race Alex came through and I figured he might be able to drag me clear of the rest so I sat on his back wheel for a lap or two but the break never happened and in a few places I felt quicker, with about three or four laps to go Alex had a big bobble going onto the back straight and I thought right this is my chance, I've got to try to go now, unfortunately though I had to roll a tiny bit because I was quite close behind him, regardless I got my head down and made a point of glancing quickly at the big tv monitor in the stadium section to check my gap, starting the last lap I knew it was going to be real tight but I thought do the best you can, make no mistakes and see what happens, I could hear a bike which I figured was Alex pretty much the whole lap right up my exhaust pipe but no passes had happened, going into the stadium area for the final time I could hear him right on me so I drifted a tiny bit wide on the exit of the left to block the entry to the following right and thought right I should have this now, going in real tight I was a tiny bit slow entry wise but held a tight ish line, just got on the gas to square off the exit and then Alex appeared underneath me, I thought NOOOOOOOO, I kept on the gas and tried to ride around the outside of him and then squared off the final fast right but I missed out on the win by just 4 1000th's of a second, I was gutted but far happier than the 1st race because this time at least I was in with a good shout of a win, something I had no chance of in race 1!!!!

Looking back on the weekend now I think as a team we did a fantastic job, of course I'll never be happy with 2nd places but after losing so much track time and having a third gear high side two seconds wasn't bad going and it came with the added bonus of taking the lead in the championship, albeit by a measly 9 points, that 2nd race win would've certainly helped that a bit that's for sure!!!

Monday morning we headed straight off to Brno for a few days off, this is about the only place in the world that we actually get to full on relax and escape from everything, I'm really enjoying a few days off now before getting right back on the case training wise in preparation for the Grand Finale at Brands Hatch, that will be here before we know it and I can't wait. Massive thanks to Rapid Solicitors Kawasaki and Paul Bird Motorsport for all their hard work over the weekend and also to all the fans for your support, it means a lot!!Take it easy, Shakey #67