I think it's fair to say after Snetterton that both myself and the Rapid solicitors Kawasaki team knew there was work needed going forward, he we were coming off the back of a not so good weekend for us thinking wow, what happened there, basically we discovered that speed wise any top speed advantage we used to have had been negated and not only that despite a test day and a race weekend we couldn't get the feeling we wants from the front end of the bike, like I said, work was needed!!!
Onwards and upwards though, both the team and myself stepped it up in between the two races, we changed the front forks back to our old ones and the boys spent a whole load of time on the dyno trying different engine specs and working on the mapping etc, on my part I got a fair bit of training done although that didn't go entirely to plan, cycling 90km's Monday, 80 on Tuesday I set of Wednesday morning for a real steady little recovery ride just to spin my legs over, got less than half a mile from my house and without going into too much detail got semi taken out, it wasn't massive it did leave me with a big gash up my left arm and elbow, something I could've definitely done without but hey, it could've been far far worse!!
On to Brands hatch then, for Friday we only had one session and that wasn't until 3pm or something, to be honest I was a bit gutted as Thursday had been my sons last day at nursery and he had a little party and a play he was in for leaving on the Friday, typically that started at 2pm so I couldn't be there risking getting stuck in traffic on route here and end up missing the 1st session, that wouldn't have been cool!! I'm no fan of the Indy circuit at Brands to be honest but the one good thing about a 45 second lap is that you get up to speed real fast and can get a lot of work done in a short space of time, something we definitely needed to do!!!
The guys had made some changes to the bike from Snetterton, we'd changed back to our old front forks and various other chassis changes were made, to be honest I wasn't really feeling it, I was expecting all my problems to be gone, we worked hard throughout the session and made some progress but knew we'd have to sit down and work out a plan for the first assault on the GP circuit the following day, and that, it what we did!!
Immediately on Saturday we had a much better feeling from the bike, I was fast and consistent too, we were chipping away from then on in and ended the session P1 half a second clear of the rest.
Session 2 went equally well, again small step by step improvements saw us top the time sheets again and a long run on the tyres confirmed race pace wise we were looking pretty strong so that pleased me.
Into qualifying we went and we were still just chipping away, making small improvements here and there to get the bike better, I never drove myself too mad in Q1 only completing 4 laps as an electronic change to our engine braking wasn't working at all, the lap time was poor and we ended up P4 but it was all cool, more changes for Q2 would sort that!!
Q2 we did on the same used tyres as Q1 so it was no surprise that despite going a bit faster we dropped to 5th, the bike felt better and that was all that mattered, whilst there's no points for Pole it's a front row that counts I was looking forward to having a go in Q3 on new tyres...
Q3 went.... Good!! We'd made one final change, a stiffer front fork spring as the extra forces being put through the bike were welding the forks to the bottom of the travel and causing a fair bit of instability on hard braking, the change thankfully was Really really good, I knew on my warm up lap I'd be able to push harder, I eventually pushed just hard enough taking Pole position by just over a tenth from Alex Lowes although to be honest I almost wished there was one more session as the change we made to the front was so good it was almost as if the rear of the bike couldn't keep up, so one more little change to the rear and I'm certain we could go faster still!!
In morning warm up we tried a different spec of rear shock to help with the problems from Q3 and had a steady ride around on used tyres, I rode out on my warm up lap and had a clear track in front of me so I pushed hard for my first flier, the bike felt a little different but I completed the lap and thought that felt good but then I looked at the lap time and though hmm maybe not, I had a bit of a go again trying to suss things out and got a bit faster, once I got up to speed things felt fine and I ended up 2nd a 10th off of Josh so all good.
Race one then, it's fair to say I had a plan, the lights went out and I got a great start, lead into turn 1, Alex passed me down into bottom bend but I passed him straight back, he en passed me into Surtees so I thought, right ok, you lead for a bit then, that suits me, I sat happily behind him for a few laps and then Josh came past, I was cool with that too, Josh passed Alex and after a few laps got a tiny bit of a gap, I re passed Alex and caught back to Josh and at that point I saw on my pit board +.3 I figured if Josh and I maintained that or extended the lead I'd sit behind Josh for a few more laps and take it from there, next thing I know Alex came back passed, by now there were 6-7 laps left so I decided to get to the front and try to push on at my own pace and try to break them both, I passed Alex then lined up Josh at the end of the back straight, I dived up the inside to take the lead but no sooner had I got to the front I lost the front, literally, a big 120 odd mph get off which destroyed the bike, I couldn't believe it, it wasn't like I ran in there thinking oh no, I've over done this, far from it in fact, the team certainly had their work cut out for me to make race 2 as the damage definitely wasn't going to polish it, that's for sure!!
I heard on tv something which really annoyed me, basically being questioned for falling down and asking if it was going to see me crack now as the others were catching up etc, "what will this do to Shakey's head now?" I'll show you what it will do I thought to myself!!!!!
Amazingly the guys got the bike built back up in time for race two, I was starting race 2 in P4 which due to the camber on the inside of the track at the bottom there isn't ideal, anyway, I got a great start as the lights went out and once again lead into turn one, being so disappointed with the crash in race one I knew I needed a good race, especially with the fact we had a couple of weeks off after then straight into a triple header at Oulton park, the course car came out due to an accident and seeing as how nobody had tried to pass before it despite the fact I was maintaining a fairly steady pace as soon as the car went in I went for it lapping probably just over half a second or so a lap faster, despite this my pit board continued to say +.0 so I thought oh well this is it then, I knew it was James Ellison behind me and figured if he tried to make a move and lap faster I'd try to go with him but as it was I managed to hold the lead and took the win, I was chuffed to bits with the team for all their hard work, that victory was for them!!
After the bitter disappointment of race one turning things around the way we did for race two was great, we know that as a team we have work to do and I'm more than prepared to taking training to the next level in order to have no question marks whatsoever with myself, however whilst I didn't wish it on the team after race two when the boys had totally rebuilt the bike the organisers stripped all the top 5 bikes to properly measure the chassis's to check everything was legal and mine was one of the bikes that got checked and guess what, it passed, perhaps that'll shut up some of the idiots in the paddock who are convinced anyone that wins must be cheating!!!!
Moving on now, Oulton park next as I said earlier, a triple header, that's 75 points and nine podium credits up for grabs, hopefully we'll be taking more than a chunk of those, until then guys and girls... Enjoy the sunshine ;-) Shakey #67
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