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