Anyway, enough already, we're here now and that's all that matters, Friday night was quite amusing, we always go out for dinner in the evening but usually there isn't a fun fair at the track and when we got back to the circuit myself and my crew chief did a reverse bungee jump, he was so funny, screaming for about 60% of the time we were on it, I liked it that much that I had another go straight after with my team mate Keith lol!!
Somewhat typically the first session of the weekend was hampered by wet weather which was far from ideal as we have some stuff we need to try to test, as it was we went out to try the bike in the wet, we haven't actually done that many wet laps this year so now was as good a time as any, the session went well despite a couple of little moments and a not ideal feeling from the front of the bike but the biggest problem came when I pulled back into the pits.....
Basically to cut a long story short, a few days ago I leant into one of our cars and took my daughter out but I immediately swung her straight up in the air above my head and the instant she went up something went in my back, I gently carried her in and explained what happened and after a couple of days as good as forgot all about it, now though I'd done a 10 or so lap run in the wet, pulled into the pits, swung my leg to get off the bike and completely locked up, eventually I got off but I don't know if you've ever had the same thing where you try to straighten up but every time you lift up you literally can't get a breath, not ideal!!
We called it a day for the rest of the session and headed to the circuit physio's to try to get loosened off and to be honest it initially didn't have anywhere near the affect I was hoping it would, I was in a bit of a bad place!!
As the afternoon wore on some tablets and the Physio had me feeling a bit better, the afternoon track session was dry and to be honest I figured that just getting to the end of the session would be a massive improvement on last year lol, the bike was working pretty good in the dry so we stuck at it out there on one set of tyres to ensure taking them over race distance, a couple of guys fired a new set of tyres at their bikes towards the end of the session so we dropped from 2nd down to 4th but it's all cool.
We knew we could improve the bike going into the final free practice and we had a good plan, I started the session with a new pair of front forks that had a completely different setting in compared to my usual ones and despite the track having quite a few damp ish patches from the overnight rain I immediately improved my time from the day before, the bike was a definite overall improvement but as is so often the case the setting needed some work on it to get the most out of it so I came in and the boys made a change which to be fair made things a little worse so one final quick fix saw us end the session P2 to Alex who'd tested here last week or whenever it was so it wasn't all bad.
Qualifying ended up going pretty good to be fair, we were still chasing set up all the way through with the new forks and stuff and trying different rear shocks etc, we kind of got it all sorted or so we thought then Q2 we seemed to struggle for grip a bit, we put it down to a possibly iffy rear tyre and cracked on for Q3 and despite earning a decent and somewhat important 2nd I was very disappointed with my lap time and felt we had a much better lap in us, maybe it wasn't the rear tyre then was the conclusion....
Race day came and with it so did some decent track temperature, I went into race one feeling pretty good, we knew Alex was going to be strong and fully expected him to try to go the second the lights went out but as the did and he did I got on the back of him and just sat there, I love watch Alex riding apart from obviously when the chequered flag's about to come out lol and Cadwell was no different, Alex set a real steady pace, and with that pace I saw him having the odd little moment here and there and I was sat behind at like 80% thinking this is absolutely perfect, to be honest the only thing that would have made Ot slightly better would be +1 or something on my board so I knew it was just he and I but unfortunately due to the pace my board said pretty much the whole race +0, after sitting there and conjuring up a cunning plan I decided to leave it till four or five laps from the end then try to pull the pin and go, the only problem with my plan that I'd underestimated however was that Alex had the same plan so there we were 5 laps from the end doing high 1.28's on cruise control and when I went to go we start knocking the best part of a second of a lap off the times for the final four laps, the concerning thing for me was how my bike reacted to that speed difference so after collecting 2nd to Alex I had a chat with the boys for a plan for race 2!!
With some slightly different settings in the bike that my crew chief was as good as certain would give me a race winning package I lined up on the 2nd row in P5, my problem had been that I'd sat behind Alex and made no effort for a fast lap so I got a bit caught out and ended up on row 2..
I'm not going to drag on about race 2, I got a decent start but it all went to pot from there, 2 or 3 corners in I realised I had a problem with the bike, basically the setting was great but the only variable wasn't, I must've got a bit of a duff rear tyre because I got dropped by the front 4, finished 4th because of Josh's crash and the rear tyre looked like it hadn't done 5 laps let alone an 18 lap scrap around Cadwell park, I was so unhappy as you can probably imagine, I tried so so hard in that race too, I just didn't have any feeling for what was happening underneath me, fortunately though when the team got the bike back they down loaded the data and could see immediately that the tyre was the problem so whilst it was incredibly annoying the only blessing was that it happened now and not in the showdown because at Cadwell it cost me 3 podium credits at the most but in the showdown that would have been 12 points... a BIG difference!!!
I'm now really looking forward to getting to Donington, Cadwell has been the first round all year that I didn't win at least one race so hopefully we'll get that little glitch ironed out there!! Take it easy guys and girls, Shakey #67
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