Donington park!!

It seemed like a long old time ago since my winless round back at Cadwell park and I'm not gonna lie that winless round was a statistic that I wanted to put to bed as soon as possible, Donington though would be an interesting round as I never got to race there last year because of the shoulder injury at Cadwell so we'd have to wait to see what this year brings!!

The start didn't exactly get off to a flyer, as you will have probably seen on the news there was a MASSIVE 120 odd car pile up right near my house and it threw the surrounding areas into absolute turmoil, I'd planned to leave mid morning, head to Milton Keynes to see the guys at Corley cycles and meet up with a good mate for a coffee then get to Donington, to for a bit of a cycle for a couple of hours or so then drop into race weekend mode, with the accident though that all got thrown clean out the window and I never even got to Donington until around 6pm then it was straight into a Eurosport interview then straight out to dinner with the team and the guys from K Tech!!!

Having arrived in like 29 degrees temperature in shorts I was a bit disappointed to wake Friday morning to the sound of pouring rain, it was that bad in the morning that we never even bothered getting changed into leathers and just watched the session which was a bit of a non event to be honest, it was so frustrating because I just wanted to get out and get riding!!

Things didn't look a whole lot better for the afternoon session but quite a few of the boys headed out onto the track so I left it until about 15 minutes from the end of the session and headed out for a look, initially the bike felt dreadful, Donington however is notoriously slippery in the wet so with that in mind I did a lap or two to bed in some new brake pads then popped back into the pits to make some changes, unfortunately with the time we had left there was no time to make a big enough change as I felt we were quite a long way off setting wise and because of it I was having to ride to about 50 odd % of my wet riding ability but the small change was ever so slightly better so I improved a tiny bit riding wise and finished only 1.4 off of the front which considering how useless I felt I was pretty happy with!!

As you can probably imagine waking Saturday morning to sun shine and a dry track I was in a pretty good mood and really looking forward to getting out on track, free practice 3 actually went really really well, I used one pair of tyres to check race distance duration and for the majority of the session I remained half a second faster than everybody else, right in the dying minutes a bunch of guys fired in a new pair of tyres dropping me to P3 but I was feeling really good and really positive about our performance.

Throughout the qualifying sessions we made a few more little steps with the bike and in all fairness what I asked the team and K tech for they gave me its just that in doing so for the final session when I knew what time I was capable of the changes we made basically just made my bike a little bit too unpredictable, sure, we increased rear grip which was an area we needed to improve but in doing so I felt a step behind the bike the whole time and ultimately it cost me, I was happy enough with P4 thinking that's a front row that'll do only to find out that the organisers have now made Donington for some unknown reason a 3 bike per row grid, I get it at places like Cadwell and Knockhill but Donington... REALLY?????

The other thing which really annoyed me was not making the lap time I thought I had in me but hey, there's no points or podium credits for qualifying so lets get morning warm up out of the way and see what the races bring!!  

Saturday evening we sat down with the team and K tech to make a plan for the following day, we knew we needed to make a step with the bike and it wasn't going to be a click or two of compression or rebound damping so after going through the data together and me explaining my feelings we formulated a cunning plan...

Morning warm up went ok, not great but ok, our bike is quite sensitive to change and typically when we throw something new at it we need time to balance things and maintain the new positives whilst improving any negatives, after warm up k tech and the boys In my team sat down and then came up with a big plan, let me tell you when your crew chief says before the 1st race "right this race day is now going to be one big test" you know they've gone big lol!!!

I got a great start of the 2nd row and slotted straight into 3rd, exiting turn one I went under James Ellison into the top of Craner curves and as soon as I did I thought crikey I'm committed now, I hope these bloody changes work!!!

Fortunately yes was the answer to that question!!, after a few laps getting to grips with the differences the bike just seemed to get better and better and it was almost like I was some sort of novice trying to learn, understand and push the limits as the race wore on, after about 6 or 7 laps I'd found a real good rhythm and had worked out exactly what was what, I knew my strengths and I knew also where I wasn't so good, towards the end of the race with a lap to go I decided to try to make my move, I got into Coppice real good, got turned but then had a big slide being a bit over eager on the throttle so I knew it was all going to come down to the last lap, I lined up for exactly the same manoeuvre, got in good, got turned good, got on the gas good, got a mega run through third gear, just started thinking yes this is gonna work, shifted to 4th and bang, a false neutral, a word beginning with B and ending in ollocks came out rather loud and it was all I could do from there on in to get to the line in 2nd, I was real happy though and definitely had a big smile on my face, believe it or not after a long debrief with my team including the K tech guys I left them to make a plan and was really looking forward to race two!!

For race two the boys had once again made some changes, it's funny you know the whole trust thing, you see if I'd explained my feelings on the bike to myself and came up with the conclusion that my boys did I would have thought no don't be silly but seeing as we'd made such a big improvement since morning warm up I figured I'd just roll with it!!

I got a great start once again and to be honest I could pretty much get away with just saying I went bloody fast, half a second a lap faster than I qualified and 3 or 4 10th"s faster than my best in race 1, I stayed in 2nd pretty much the whole race, managed to pass Alex who lead the whole race on the last lap, get passed back then nearly drag him to the line but ended up 2nd again, that'll pretty much cover it lol!!

To be perfectly honest I was made up after the two races, we weren't in good shape after warm up so I'd like to thank my suspension guys Chris and Nash from K tech, my crew chief Johnny, Keith's crew chief Brains and the teams data guy Angus for all their hard work, I'm gutted I couldn't win one for them but it wasn't for a lack of trying, the boys did great and whilst I'm never happy to not win I've never been happier with two seconds, we earns them that weekend and achieved them through nothing other than hard work and determination!!

Now it's onwards and upwards, the show down is here and my championship lead has been cut due to podium credits to just 6 points, we've got to now treat each race weekend as we have all year, work hard and try to win, 6 points means f all and seems cruel after 3/4's of the season being so successful but it is what it is, I can't wait to get going again now!!!!! Thanks so much for all your support all weekend, it means a lot, take it easy guys and girls, Shakey #67