Brands Hatch Round 1 2013

Finally it’s that time of year again, I get to type a race blog for you guys!!!.. I know I’ve been a little bit quiet in terms of general blogs about what I’ve been up to but to be honest if I round it up into a nutshell, it goes a little something like this, well three days a week it does, get up, take my son to nursery, go straight to the gym, try to get back by about 12-30 or 1pm take my wife and daughter out for a couple of hours then get back to the nursery for 3pm to collect Zack, take them all home, maybe go for a run, have tea, bath the kids, watch tv then go to bed so hardly rock and roll if you catch my drift!!!

So then Brands hatch, well, it certainly never got off to a flying start that’s for sure, in fact, so slow a start it was that the most exciting thing I did all morning was to eat a bowl of crunchy nut cornflakes, I’m not even kidding, that track temperature in the morning session reached the balmy heights of 1.7 degrees so nowhere near warm enough for us to ride, I think only 5 people went out on track in that session and at least one of them crashed!!! You probably can’t even begin to imagine the frustration, you wait all winter to get out and ride your bike, take it to Spain with a completely different ECU on it get back to the UK hoping to work on solutions for your problems then all you get is no track time at all because of the great British weather!!! 

Fortunately for the afternoon session the track temperature got up a little, well, by a little I mean up to about 7 or 8 degrees, which is far from ideal but at least gave us a chance to have a little blast around!! The session went ok for us, I was pretty steady to be honest and more than a little aware of the fact the track was so cold, the bike was working well but I think it’s fair to say we were far from pushing to the limits but nevertheless we ended up P1 so it was work in progress albeit at a half sensible pace.
Saturday was a much nicer looking day, bright blue sky and sun but boy o boy was it cold!!! The weather’s a funny old thing isn’t it, sometimes you can look outside and think do you know what that even looks cold but Saturday could have quite easily have been 30 degrees from looking out however I can assure you it wasn’t. As a team we’d sat and looked through the data from the session the day before and found a few things that we thought could help us out so I was keen to get out and try them, we also started on the tires from the day before as it’s important to see how you’re doing longevity wise as 30 laps around the short circuit drags on a bit and there’s no point being really fast for 15 or 20 of those laps but then having tires so rooted that you can’t go fast enough at the end, fortunately we were looking pretty good in that respect as were my lap times, we ended the session P1 again but as is always the case the faster you go the more problems you come up against so it was back to going through data ready for the next session which was qualifying.

During Q1 we tried a slightly different setting, did a good flying lap, good enough to be fastest then parked it, the different setting had some positives but also some negatives so it was back to the drawing board for Q2.

Q2 went ok, a different setting helped a little and I went faster again, we had a bit of a plan to tow my team mate around for a few laps and with me pushing the new setting I went quicker again but with Keith right on my exhaust he actually went faster than me so it was a rapid solicitors 1-2 in that session lol!!!

For the final session, the important one we’d made another little change and now it was time to push, to be honest a front row would’ve done me just fine, I dug in and my 1st flying lap was my fastest of the weekend, then I pushed a bit harder and went P1, then, just out of interest Keith came past on a flyer with Kiyo getting a tow so I thought I’ll jump on the back and see what’s going on, I did that and just spent the lap watching and went quicker still so Pole Position for the first round of the season it was!!!!
We had something different geometry wise to try with the bike for morning warm up which even on used tires seemed to help the bike, we ended that session fastest too after a bit of a push towards the end of the session with a pretty fast lap time so I was pretty happy going into the races although I have to admit I was a little nervous!!!

Lining up on the grid brought all of the emotions that you feel flooding back, the stomach aches, head aches, nerves, you name it, they all kicked in with full effect before the start, they always go the 2nd the lights go out but up until that point, well….!! 

Talking of the lights, they went out and I got a real good start, holeshoted in to the 1st turn and lead for a few laps, the problem was this was totally against my strategy, I wanted someone else to lead for a few laps to give me a bit of a chance to suss out my opposition, I was riding lap times wise that slow that I may as well have been riding to the shops to be honest so I was quite relieved when Josh finally passed me, I sat behind him more than comfortably for about 15 laps with my pitboard telling me that Alex was running P3, then, I got a board saying Keith had got to 3rd so I thought now’s as good a time as any to try to pull a gap so I went for it, Alex did get back to 2nd eventually but fortunately I held him off to the flag to take the 1st win of the year!!!

For race two we once again had to make some changes to the bike as I suffered a bit over the course of the race despite the fact I’d made an incredibly conscious effort not to use too much rear tire throughout the race, I once again got the holeshot and lead into turn one after probably an even better start than I’d had in the first race, I lead again for a few laps with exactly the same game plan as the 1st race, this time it was James Ellison that came passed me so I got on the back of him and away we went, I was pretty impressed by the race pace we were running, pretty much every lap seemed to be in the 45’s which is bloody fast race pace wise, if I’m honest I sat there watching my lap timer and watching him thinking right sooner or later this pace is gonna ease up a bit then I’m gonna go for it, however, as it turned out the pace stayed the same right through to lap 27, I knew I could pass James and that wasn’t the issue, I wasn’t sure if I’d be able to go any faster to gap him once I did pass so I figured best to leave it late then just try to defend my lines, James had a bit of a bobble coming out of bottom bend and I saw my chance, I got alongside him ready to pass into Surtees but then James peeled in fairly early and I had nowhere to go, I jammed on my brakes and just clipped James’s back wheel with my front but both of us stayed on however I had to run straight onto the grass, fortunately for me, James, myself and Alex had such a strong pace that we’d put a massive gap into everyone else so I got back on track and recovered and finished 3rd, a bit gutted to be honest but happy at the same time as it certainly could’ve been worse that’s for sure.

After the races I sat down with the team as we know what we need to do in order to improve, I’m really looking forward now to Thruxton, in fact, I can’t wait for it, we’ve got some stuff to try there which will hopefully help us out big time so fingers crossed for that.


All that’s left to say now is a massive thanks to Rapid Solicitors and PBM for a great bike, to all of you who cheered and supported us throughout the weekend and for now, onwards and upwards!!!! Take it easy guys and girls, Shakey #67