Shakey

Lets get it on!!

2012-01-01T15:48:00.006+01:00

So then guys and girls, i hope you're all suitably recovered from your hangovers!!!??? Looking back doesn't it seem already like Christmas was months ago?, it does to me!! Christmas was a pretty quiet one for us, we spent it in the UK and had mum around for dinner, the kids, well our son had a lovely time, my daughters a little young to know what was going on but hopefully she had a good time too!! I don't think i'm going to bother going over what happened in 2011 as it's always better to look forward i feel, with that in mind we headed off to Spain so i could get a solid 10 days training in, last year on new years day we were over in the Czech Republic and i had my father in law drop me up at the Brno circuit and i ran the 8 miles or so back to their house, i hardly ever run nowadays as i spend too much time cycling but after a quiet new years celebration here in Spain i decided to go for a run once again, however today the suns shinning and it's about 18 degrees, quite a contrast from last year when it was about -8!!!, i only did 10km today but feel good for it ;-)

New Years day... Beats being in the rain and cold in the UK!!!!

Training for this year is fully back in swing, i spent what feels like pretty much the last two months feeling poorly with man flu's of one form or another but after a bit of rest boxing day i finally got out on my push bike albeit my winter bike, not the one in the pic below.., it felt mega to get out training again although it was only a short steady plod, i did exactly the same ride again the following day then got out on the motocross bike the day after, tomorrow i'll be out pedalling on the bike in the picture which i can't wait for racking up some steady miles, same again tuesday then maybe another run on wednesday, i think i have to fly to the UK for the day on Thursday for an event for Kawasaki then back here for a few more days cycling and running!!

Around the 9th i think we'll head back to the UK and at some point i'm going to be dropping my bike back to Corley cycles where they're going to put it up for sale for me, the thing is mega, a Specialized S-Works SL3, full Dura ace gears, trick Mavic wheels, it really is the nuts, get in touch with them if you're interested in a bargain!!!!

I Love this bike, it could be yours via Corley cycles 01908 311424 (ask for Phil)

I'm really looking forward to heading up to Penrith sometime around the 2nd week of January to see the team and check out the bikes which are back now from Macau, on route to there or on the way back down i'm meeting up with a trainer guy to check out what kind of shape i'm in heading into the season, there's all sorts of tests he's going to run me through in order for me to be sure that i'm in the best possible shape heading into the races so i'm really excited about that, getting to the workshops will be good as it'll give me a chance to have a sit on the bike and see if there's anything we need to change position wise before we head out testing, talking of which we're hoping to get out for a shakedown test mid february just to run through a few things, there's going to be quite a lot of stuff to be working through at that test then the guys will head back to the UK build two bikes to the spec that we prefer before heading back out again to Spain for some track time to confirm a few things and try anything they come up with from the data from the first set of tests, it's kind of funny in a way that the longer i seem to spend racing the more i look forward to getting out on my bike for the first time, definitely no problems motivation wise, i literally can't wait to start riding!!!

Right, that's about it for my first Blog of 2012, i wish you all a happy new year, Lets hope it's going to be a safe, successful, healthy and wealthy year for us all!!! Take it easy guys and girls, Shakey #67

Motocross madness!!

2011-12-02T01:27:00.002+01:00

Do you ever find yourself thinking do you know what, i'm going to go and do something, doesn't really matter what it is but it seems the longer you delay that do you know what i'm gonna stage the more difficult it is to actually get out and do it, well, generally that's the case for me anyway!! On this particular occasion i'm talking about motocross, it's one of those things you know, it's so so good in terms of training not only from a cardiovascular point of view but bike strength, keeping sharp etc in fact i'd probably goes as far as saying there's not much better you could do than a few sessions on a motocross bike to keep fit over the winter....BUT, and it's a BIIIIGGGGGG but, it's easy to get hurt, just the simplest little cross rutted take off over a jump or get something slightly wrong and a&e it is sunshine!!!

That 2 and a half years had played havoc with me, the longer it went on the less and less bothered i was about actually getting out and going riding but when Kawasaki gave me a brand new 2012 KXF250 well, it'd be rude not to use it now wouldn't it!!!!

Going back a few years, well nearly 10 to be exact the only training and i mean the only training i did that year was motocross twice a week if i could, it's one of those sports that if you're at it all the time you get real sharp, in fact the week after the final BSB round at Donington Park that year my friends entered me into a motocross race meeting, in my class i won all 3 races and actually finished 2nd overall out of everybody there, well, let me tell you, yesterday riding for the first time in so long i felt like i needed an orange jacket on or something!!! It all started last week when i said to one of my mates, right this is it, i've got a bike and i want to go riding, i don't care where i just need to go as soon as otherwise this 2 and a half year thing will turn into god knows how long!!!, i was so excited the night before i had everything loaded and that was it, a quick call by Wag my mate i went riding with to the guy who runs Churchills motocross track confirmed the track was open so Wag and i were on route!! We arrived at the track and i jumped out of the van all excited and immediately thought oh no, the place was like a mudbath, don't get me wrong they'd done a great job of preparing the track but overnight torrential rain had taken it's toll in a big way, my poor new bike was the 1st thing that went through my mind!!!

My first stint only lasted 14 minutes, i wore my Garmin heart rate monitor so that i could download the data when i got home, i remembered in the past that mx was a hell of a workout, let me tell you just staying upright for those 14 minutes was a workout in itself, the bike was fantastic, a 100 times better than i was, but it was so slushy wet mud that the minute you shut the throttle on some parts of the track which you had to do because the corners were quite tight the bike practically stopped dead and sunk!!!!

I ended up doing 3 or 4 good sessions and the track did dry out a tiny bit in a few places so i started to really enjoy it but immediately driving home i started to get a bit stiff and sore so i knew full well the following day was gonna be painful and sure enough it was but a quick call to my physio got me a 9-30am appointment which worked wonders!!! I downloaded the data from my monitor and to give you and idea generally cycling which is the training i do the most i'll average my heart rate at around 155 beats per minute and unless i go crazy my max will be around 185-188, well my final stint on the mx bike was 25 minutes long and i had an average of 172bpm and a max of 192 so it goes to show how physical the motocross thing is!!!!!

I'm really looking forward to my next ride out now, it might even be this weekend yet we'll see, if not next wednesday for sure, got to make sure i don't slip back into that two and a half year thing again haven't i, let's face it, BSB starts in March next year and i want to start and maintain a very high level of fitness!!! I've posted up two videos so far from the riding so check them out in the videos section at www.shakey.com

Right talking of fitness they say recovery is really important don't they so on that note i'm outta here and off to bed, take it easy, Shakey #67!!!

Lottery win...

2011-11-13T20:15:00.001+01:00

Had a bit of a result... The other day at dinner we got given some fortune cookies, now that in itself isn't a result but the same person that gave us these ones gave us some before when we were trying to buy a place back here in the UK, we'd been trying for ages to get a mortgage sorted and things were looking pretty grim, then we got the cookies and a few days later a mortgage agreement followed, obviously I laughed it off and put it down to coincidence but this time the fortune cookies said wealth was coming our way, that was Tuesday this week, what happens Sunday morning... I get an e mail from Camelot reading something along the lines of information on your ticket, bloody hell I thought, tell me we haven't gone and won the lottery... Sure enough I logged on 1st thing this morning to discover we had indeed won.... £10 oh well, better get back to that restaurant soon, see what it says next time ;-) Take it easy, Shakey #67

2012!!!!!!!! :-)

2011-11-13T00:32:00.001+01:00

So I guess it’s been five weeks now since the final BSB round back at Brands hatch, almost seems impossible doesn’t it, it feels like 5 minutes in some ways to me but in other ways it seems like 5 years ago!!!

After Brands I was a little bit bashed about and felt sore for a week or two but finally that settled down and the only things that started hurting then were my arm and ears from holding a bloody mobile phone all the time ;-) It’s funny in a way because for the past few years, well since 2008 I’ve always had a manager to take care of this time of year for me but I decided things would be better if I did them on my own so I parted ways with my manager a month or so ago. I’m quite enjoying the whole making calls and negotiating deals thing to be honest and at least you know first hand exactly where you are.

Personally a few bits and pieces have been happening, I’ve been able to spend lots of time with my baby daughter Lilly and Zack which has been real good, Zack’s almost a little bit too in love with his little sister right now bless him, it’s pretty amusing watching him with her!!! I’ve also been down to Spain to collect our cats and dogs and brought them over to the UK which stole a week out of my life!!! Whilst on route down to Spain with my friend Stef I took a joke photo in the services of him pretending to text whilst driving which for all the do gooders out there caused absolute chaos, it REALLY pissed me off at the time because I was trying to be fun, to make people smile etc, updating my Twitter profile and all I got was a load of idiots going on about police evidence and how irresponsible I was, at one point I honestly thought F**k the lot of you I’ll just shut down my Twitter account, I don’t need that sort of crap but then there were a load of nice messages and I thought I’d not give the idiots the pleasure of knowing they’d got to me a bit so we carried on!! Stef and I got in a good bike ride, A being the operative word, we peddled 100 miles in a real good time but on about mile 80 odd Stef turned across the front of me at 26mph and took my front wheel away which sent me sliding down the road at that speed in lycra, how sore!! Fortunately I was ok apart from cuts and bruises but my bike took a bit of a knock, the good news is though the guys at Corley cycles are getting it fixed up and it’ll soon be as good as new!!!

Talking of knowing where you are things finally got sorted at the beginning of this week, last week things were still up in the air with Honda and a couple of other bits but finally Honda decided they wouldn’t wait any longer and I simply wasn’t ready to make a decision at that point so I had to pass, it was a frustrating way to end a very good year and I’d personally like to thank my team boss Harvey, Chris my crew chief, Nick and Tom for all their hard work all year, they were a good bunch of guys but with that having happened on Sunday I headed up to Penrith, after a good few weeks going backwards and forwards with Birdy on the Monday the deal got signed off and it’s on now, Paul Bird Motorsport Kawasaki for BSB in 2012, Birdy and what I like to call MY team are coming back to the UK to try to get the job done and the title won and I’m chuffed to bits that I was the 1^st door he came knocking at when looking for a rider.

It was funny in a way being back up there, this is the third time now that I’ve ridden for Paul and despite the fact the last time was 2007 I walked in and immediately it was like I’d never been away. I can’t begin to tell you how much I’m looking forward to next year already, there’s plenty of exciting stuff going on at PBM and with the program Paul has planned it should make for a very interesting year, I was hoping to get out and have a ride around on a bike by the end of the year but with the bikes going over to Macau it doesn’t look likely that it will be possible, that said the guys will have a new BSB spec bike built probably mid December and spend hours upon hours sussing engine specs, fuel mapping etc to get things started, I believe the plan is to start testing pretty early, initially with a bit of a shakedown test in Spain to try a few different specs engine and chassis wise then after getting back and going through all the data and feedback etc push forward in whichever direction we need to be going in order to get a 2^nd run of Spanish tests sorted to check our progress, I can’t wait to get riding again and see how the new rules are going to pan out, it’s certainly going to be quite a spectacle trying to ride a bike with 200+ BHP with no traction, launch or wheelie control, big skids will definitely be doable ;-)!!!!!!

Going forward now we’re looking into what days I’m going to be heading up to the N.E.C for the bike show where I’ll be spending time obviously at Kawasaki as well as on the Feridax (Shoei UK) stands among others, I’m working right now on getting my personal deals done and hope to confirm that nothing will change as I work with two great companies in Shoei (Feridax) and Alpinestars but more on that when I know what’s happening.

Tuesday I’m off to Kawasaki to collect my new motocross bike to play on so I look forward to getting out on that and other than getting stuck in training wise that’s about it for this Blog, for sure there’ll be more to report in the very near future so I’ll keep you all posted as soon as progress is made, take it easy, Shakey #67

Blogger App!!!

2011-11-11T19:02:00.001+01:00

Hey all, this has cheered me up a little, just realised Blogger has an app so I might be able to make them slightly more frequent now whilst out and about, expect one real soon with the reasons for changing teams for next year and my thoughts going forward, talk to you soon, take it easy, Shakey #67

Brands Hatch, the Finale!!!!

2011-10-16T01:06:00.004+02:00

I think it’s more than fair to say that on the run into Brands Hatch we as the HM Plant Honda team were well and truly on the back foot as far as the fight for the 2011 British Superbike Championship was concerned but it’s even more fair to say that I’ve never headed into a race weekend so fired up and positive about the outcome either!!!

We knew that nothing less than 3 wins was going to see us through and that even if I managed to pull that off there was a fair chance that the likes of Tommy and Hopperrealistically wouldn’t be off the podium so it was always going to be a long shot…

We found ourselves in exactly the same situation as the August round on the Friday morning i.e. with our fingers up our backsides doing naff all the whole day until about 3pm when we then had one 45 minute free practice session on the short Indy circuit.

That session came and went pretty quickly, 45 minutes to be exact ;-) We tried a few little bits and pieces including a new spec shock which had some definite positives as well as a few slight down sides, that said it’s pretty difficult at the best of times to just throw something at a bike that improves it with no negatives whatsoever, other than the shock we tried a couple of different engine braking and throttle connection maps that Chris had come up with and a modification to the rear swingarm and to be honest I was pretty happy with the way things went, my pace was pretty good and it was obvious that generally things machine balance wise had improved since we were last here in August.

I was well excited to get out on track on Saturday morning, even though the schedule meant things were going to get pretty damn hectic there’s no circuit quite like the Brands GP circuit!! After 3 or 4 laps I pitted to make some changes and we tried another shock which had gone even further in the direction we’d already been working in which seemed to be another step better, the balance thing I mentioned earlier definitely seemed to be an improvement even on the faster and blinder sections of the long circuit so that really pleased me.

The free practice sessions seemed to come and pass very quickly but then I guess being half an hour long that was always likely to be the case, we made a few more steps rear shock wise but were struggling to find a healthy compromise with things, one thing our HM Plant Honda definitely is is sensitive to small changes!!!

Sheene curve...gotta love it!!!

For the 1^st of the qualifying sessions we knew we only needed a race tyre not a soft one to go through and used exactly that, I actually used that 20 minute session to try a couple of extra small changes in order to improve some of the problems we were having on corner exit, the problem was the tiniest of changes took the bike from a little too soft to a little too firm, the latter making the bike lack grip and wheelie a little bit too much.

For the second qualifying session we reverted back to the slightly softer shock spec and banged in a soft tyre, I was pretty confident that I’d be able to pull off a good time but started my lap a bit too close behind Martin Jessop so I had to abandon it before the long circuit, I had a steady rest of the lap, found some space and then went for it, the lap was going pretty good, Paddock, nailed, Druids, nailed, Graham Hill, nailed, Surtees, Hawthorn…. It was looking good, I got a good run through Westfield and a real good drive off the apex but that extra drive pushed me a tiny bit wider on the exit than usual, I could see the concrete dust from an earlier blow up but could tell that my line would only just touch the edge of the dust and with the rest of the lap being so good I needed to keep it lit, as I got onto the edge of the dustthe revs rose rapidly, the bike snapped sideways but then when it gripped it flicked me straight over the bars, that’s a pretty big high side tobe fair, on it flat in 3^rd, maybe 120mph, I don’t recommend it ;-) as I bounced down the track the bike gave my left hand a bit of a whack and as soon as I got up I contemplated whether or not I’d broken anything, both hands hurt to be fair but the left one properly hurt. Typically with the one bike rule and a trip to the medical centre qualifying once again hadn’t gone at all to plan, that said if I got away with no broken bones I reckon that’d make me a pretty lucky guy!!

The medical centre confirmed shortly after that nothing appeared broken however my hands or wrists should I say are pretty messed up so making any sense of them whatsoever was pretty tricky!!, the guys from the physio centre strapped my hands to help take theswelling down and I went to see the boys to see how the bike was.

Fortunately there wasn’t too much drama with the bike and the guys got it fixed up however unfortunately any further setting changes we had planned had to be scrapped because that was it now before the start of the Saturday race which due to my crash I had to start from 19^th on the grid for!!!

Out of Surtees towards the long circuit, awesome place!!!

I knew things weren’t exactly with us if you know what I mean, whilst I felt confident of a strong result it was going to take nothing short of a miracle to get the Championship wrapped up but as far as I was concerned there was still a chance and I intended to give my absolute all regardless.

Starting that far back at Brands is always a bit of a nightmare, generally speaking if you get through the first 3 or 4 turns your fine and you can pick your way through but it’s so easy to get caught up in other peoples mistakes, I got a pretty sensible start to be fair but ended up in amongst the carnage for the first few turns, the bike was feeling ok but something wasn’t quite right…. I bullied my way through to about 7^th I think but I seemed to be having an awful lot of problems A) getting the bike turned in and B) leaning on the front tyre, as the race wore on this problem got worse and the trouble was that to pass anyone especially the quicker guys the only way is to out brake them and run in hot but the trouble was on about 5occasions I did this then completely lost the front and lost the place again, I was getting so annoyed but there was nothing I could do, I eventually got the better of Kirkham and Rutter to end up 6^th but I wasn’t happy, the team were well pleased with coming through from 19^th but like I’d said to them all weekend the one thing the bikes done well all weekend is steer and typically come race time I lost my strongpoint, after the parc ferme I asked the guys to check the front tyre pressure and sure enough it had lost a load of pressure….gutted, no ones fault but it had just made our long shot at the title slightly longer, nothing less than 2 wins Sunday would do now….

Morning warm up was wet/damp, because of the conditions and the risk of similar forecast for later in the afternoon rather than going for a full wet set up I had Chris just back off the bike a bit from dry settings so that I could try riding the bike like that and then hope that as the track got more damp than wet the bike would start to get better, after just 2 or 3 flying laps though it was pretty obvious that the bike was far too hard, this was cool in a way because it gave us some information but at the same time in the interest of staying on the thing for warm up I had to make a pit stop to back everything off a bit more, with only 2-3 minutesremaining in the session I headed back out onto the track in the hope of getting 1 flying lap, I rolled down into Graham Hill and gently picked up the throttle but the bike immediately flicked sideways and launched me straight over the highside again, no warning no nothingjust a big get off and walk!!! I came down pretty hard on my hands and knees which I needed…not, the parts of me that were sore from the day before hurt even more now….great!!!

After the horrible conditions and the crash in warm up the track had dried a fairbit come race time, that said there were still plenty of properly wet patches that I noticed on the sighting and warm up laps!! I sat on the grid this time starting from P3 and said to the guys bloody hell, I don’t fancy leading this bad boy for the first few laps trying to suss the job out, I think I’ll leave that to one of the others… sure enough the lights went out and by turn 2 who was in the lead…. Bugger!!!

I got presented with a tribute helmet to my new daughter before race 1 Sunday. Thanks Shoei!

I made a few massive mistakes trying to suss the best way around paddock but at one point I’d built up a 3 second lead so every time I made a mistake I just tried to relax and roll with it, a bit later towards the end of the race somebody started catching me and the gap came right down but with 7 or 8 laps still to run I didn’t want to hit the panic button so I maintained my pace but then with 3 or 4 laps to go I pulled the pin and tried and managed to start dropping 2^nd again to eventually win by about a second and a half, after the race I saw it was JK so fair play to him, he rode well because those conditions weren’t easy at all, that race gave me the fastest lap so Pole position for the final race, like I said earlier, nothing less than a double…..

Do you know it felt pretty good sat there in pole position for the final race of the year but I was also totally devastated, you see the reason being I for some reason hadit in my head that if I won both races theoretically I could still win the title, I spoke about it after the post race interviews too but I got a look at the points whilst sat in my pit box preparing for the second race and it was only then that it had hit me, I got told about all the guys crashing etc and heard that Hopper went out but what I wasn’t told was that he got restarted and actually finished and took a few points so from there on in all I could do now was finish 3^rd, my mission was in effect over and we failed.

I got a good start and got through the first few turns unscathed which was cool and from there on in I just went for it, not so much every lap balls out just every lap consistent and making my apex’s etc perfectly, my lap times were pretty good but i had a bit in the bank too should I need to crack on at any point but in the end there was no need as the gap just kept getting bigger and bigger, it’s not very often you get a race as straight forward as that I tell you, eventually the gap stretched out to over 5 seconds and during the last 5 or 6 laps every time I rode back to Clearways and could see the crowd I felt such strong mixed emotions,

This happened about 5 laps from the end of race2, that was close ;-)

sure I was happy to be leading, having the time of my life riding and seeing so many people waving and cheering but inside the other part of me was like a broken man, all I kept thinking was why did MLav and I collide, why was Silverstone beyond a total disaster until Sunday morning, this could’ve been me then, leading from the front and taking that 3^rd title I so badly wanted, on the approach to Clearways on the last lap I switched all my electronics off, looked at all the crowd, left my bike in 3rd gear and pulled a big stand up wheelie right the way around towards turn 1, it was like my way of saying sorry to all of those that were cheering, we won the battles that day but unfortunately we lost the war…

Battles won, war lost :-(

After the race behind the podium I was pretty down, feeling like all that hard work all season had gone to waste and then talking to Hopper almost made things worse, he told me which I never knew at the time that if the points had been in a normal format I would’ve been champion by 5 or 7 points or something, right there and then it was like a bit more of a kick in the nuts but I pretty quickly got over it and felt positive about things, maybe in my own little world I am the champion, as are HM Plant Honda, after all we scored the most points over the season and all that and I think it’s something to be really positive about going forward, not too bad for someone that can only ride a Ducati…..

The scenes on the podium were absolutely magical, I want to thank each and every one of the people in the crowd that cheered so loud for me, it made everything feel so much better, I also want to take this moment to congratulate Tommy Hill on becoming the champion, the boy’s done an awesome job this year and well deserves the title for all his hard work and never give up attitude, congratulations also to his Swan Yamaha team, this was a big year for Shaun Muir and the boys.

I think now’s a good time to offer my thanks to a number of people for helping me along this year, from everyone involved in the HM Plant Honda team especially my crew chief Chris, my engine builder/ mechanic Nick, my other mechanic Tom and our tyre guy Phil and my team boss Harvey, to all the guys at Feridax Uk for my excellent Shoei helmets especially Paul for his awesome service and Steve Clifford for putting the deal together, to all the guys at Alpinestars for my suits, boots and gloves, to William and the guys at Stobart for all their continued support, to Science in Sport for all of their backing, to all the guys at Corley cycles, especially Phil, to Sean Dines at Mavic for both all the product and the training support throughout last winter and this season, to Harry and all the crew at Respro, all the staff at MSV especially Stuart Higgs and Laura, to all the marshalls and medics etc that keep us safe, to all of you guys for the massive amount of support you’ve shown this year, to Reggie for keeping the motorhome and all my kit immaculate to my wife, blimey this list goes on and on and there's bound to be somebody or some people that i've forgotten!!!!!

Moving forward there’s not a great deal to say right this minute to be honest, Honda have offered me a deal to stay with them for 2012 should I choose to have another stab at BSB as has Birdy and there’s a few other options in BSB too, there’s also a couple of potentially interesting World options which could pan out pretty cool, all in all it’s looking like we’re in pretty good shape going forward which is cool.

For now though I’m hoping to take a week or so off, my body feels pretty bashed about, I went straight to my physio Monday morning to get loosened off and I still hurt a bit so a bit of rest, a few phone calls and we’ll see where life takes us over the next couple of weeks, once again massive thanks to everyone and I’ll keep you posted as soon as I have some news, take it easy guys and girls, Shakey #67

Silverstone...

2011-09-28T11:55:00.003+02:00

I always try to put a positive spin on everything I’m ever involved in, it’s the way forward as far as I’m concerned, there’s far too much negativity about anyway isn’t there!! As for last weekend you could look at it and think bloody hell, how can I put a positive spin on that but it’s easy in a way, if you could’ve seen, well maybe not seen but felt how down I was after qualifying but then seen me after morning warm up you’d see exactly what I was talking about!!

So then, after that first paragraph lets get cracking with this Blog, positively!! I have really been looking forward to this Showdown….. honest!!, only for one reason though, I love all three of the showdown tracks, last year in WSB was my first chance to ride the new Silverstone layout and I absolutely loved the place, I think I ended up something like a second or two off of the podium so I went ok there too, this year on the HM Plant Fireblade should be mega… shouldn’t it??

I set off out on track for the beginning of the first practice session with my bike set identical to the last round at Donington and to be honest even just the first couple of laps were enough to see that there was no way whatsoever we’d be running those settings, it was like riding with solid bars instead of suspension, I stuck at it for about 4 laps just to see if when I got going it would start to work but when my best lap was about 4 or 5 seconds a lap off of my time from the year before I thought no, this isn’t working, not only that if I’d stayed out much longer I would have had no fillings left due to the amount of vibration and chatter I was getting through the bike…this didn’t bode well….

We tried a few bits and pieces but all in vein to try to reduce the amount of chatter we were suffering with and actually went from full on too hard to too soft in the session but unfortunately nothing we tried and I mean nothing actually touched the chatter issue, sure we improved in other areas but I was properly struggling, not what I’d hoped for by a long way.

To be honest with you and too save my fingers and in the interest of not dragging things out I’ll skip now right the way through to qualifying because nothing unfortunately changed pretty much the whole way through the practice sessions, once again Chris and the guys made some improvements to the bike which helped in some areas but like I said to them at the time, chatter from the rear is the one problem that you just can’t ride around, fix that and we’ll go fast!!

Qualifying turned into a total disaster, I mean 13^th place, what’s that all about, to say we were struggling was a massive understatement, the only possible positive spin I could put on it was that I was surprised that with us having to qualify on race tyres whilst the others used the soft option I was surprised to be as high as we were and that’s not really that positive is it!!!

Saturday evening the whole team sat down together and spent time going over data and talking trying to find a way to figure out what on earth had been going on, in fact by the time I got back to the motor home it must have been about 9-30 but with the comments, the data and time I had everything crossed that the guys would come up with something.

Well, to say that the guys made some changes is a bit of an understatement, we had modified triple clamps, new spec rear shock, new spec front forks and a different engine braking map to go at for morning warm up, Go big or go home.. isn’t that what they say!!! I ventured out for morning warm up on used tyres as if the problem was fixed there would be much less or no chatter on a used tyre rather than going out on a new one which may of hid the problem, I did my out lap and immediately felt an improvement so I did 3 flying laps all feeling better then decided to try a new race tyre for hopefully a couple of laps, as it turned out I only got 1 flying lap but despite loads of traffic and getting a little held up in a couple of spots I lapped a second faster than I had all weekend and had no chatter, I was SO SO SO Happy!!! When I got back in I gave my crew chief a hug I was that relieved, just that one lap made the whole weekend start to feel worthwhile!!!!

Well obviously going into race 1 I was far more optimistic of a better result than I had been all weekend but the only thing that worried me was the fact that I’d only done one sensibly fast lap all weekend and now I had to do 14 of them on the bounce so we had no idea whatsoever how the bike was going to behave but with that in mind there could only be one battle plan, try to get a good start and hang on in there as best I could!!

All a bit anxious on the grid for race 1!!

As the lights went out I got a pretty good start, I made a few places on the run down towards turn 1 but due to my grid position I was right on the outside, as everyone braked and peeled in I kind of hung outside a bit let my brakes off and rolled around the outside of the turn which worked absolutely perfectly, I got a good run off of turn 1 and was up to about 6^th or 7^th already, I slotted in behind Jessop, Rutter and Brookes, passing Jessop into the chicane and then Brookes and Rutter into the turn at the end of the new F1 pit straight, eventually everything settled down a bit and a couple of laps in I knew we needed to make some more changes for the second race, the rear of my bike was too soft and in the slower tighter sections of the track I couldn’t accelerate with the likes of Tommy, M Lav and Hopper etc, It was pretty weird because those guys had like half a second or a second gap on me and it was just enough to keep me out of their slipstream down the straight, I couldn’t catch them but they couldn’t drop me, it was so frustrating for me, that said though if the team hadn’t made the changes they’d made overnight then I would’ve probably been battling for a top 15 so I guess I shouldn’t grumble!!!

I eventually crossed the line in 5^th, just behind the front four and immediately sat down with Chris and the boys to make a plan of attack for race two, I knew I needed the rear of the bike to be stiffer but rear grip needed to improve too.

After checking the data and listening to my comments Chris and the boys came up with a plan for race two, the bike was once again changed to try to give me a better package so we could fight for at the very least a podium, lets face it nothing else would suffice after the Donington races and race 1…

I got another fairly good start and thought I was going to be able to drop over the top of Kirkham who had a front row start but he lifted a tiny bit on the entry to turn one which sat me up a little bit, my bike definitely felt better in the slower sections of the track than it did in race 1, it felt far more supported at the rear but almost a little bit too much as the dreaded chatter had crept back in a little at a couple of corners on the track, that said I was making good progress and up to 2^nd behind Hopper and feeling almost too comfortable with it, I got a good run onto the Hangar straight and hung in Hopper’s slipstream as best I could then dived to the inside to take the lead at the end of the straight,

Leading the way in race 2!!

after a couple of laps leading I got a +.2 on my board, an indication that I had a tiny gap so I concentrated really hard on being perfect, hitting all my apex’s and nailing my exits hoping this would gradually increase my lead a little more but unfortunately it wasn’t to be, I got onto the Hangar straight myself and its weird how when someone’s slipstreaming you as your sat on your bike you feel the bike almost being sucked back towards the bike behind you, I knew there and then someone was coming and sure enough Hopper came past, I followed him for a lap or two but made a mistake on the brakes that let Tommy through, M Lav then came through and before I knew it I was back in 5^th again, because we were getting towards the end of the race and Brookes had took off at the front with Tommy in pursuit I figured maybe a podium was possible, I’d sussed a few potential passes but then on the last lap the red flag came out so I ended up 5^th again and pretty disappointed with it.

After the race the team were really happy with what we’d managed, I was happy obviously compared to practice and qualifying but our Showdown has been a disaster so far and now we’re well and truly on the back foot, I want to be Champion this year and after leading all year I’m feeling pretty gutted about the way these last two rounds have gone for us but all we can do as a team is regroup and come back stronger as a team with a stronger package that gives me the best possible chance of trying to win the last three races, that’s literally all I can do now, the rest I guess is down to destiny!!!

Thank you all so much for your support at the tracks, on Twitter and on my website, believe me I’m doing everything possible with what I’ve got underneath me to win races and I’ll be giving as ever my absolute all at Brands Hatch, hope to see you there, take it easy Shakey #67

Donington park...

2011-09-19T11:42:00.003+02:00

I always have really good intentions when it comes to doing my race weekend Blogs, every time I get to the circuit I think right, I’ll do rough notes or run through the Blog as the weekend goes and then have pretty much everything I need in order to fire the story up asap!! However, to be fair they normal start and finish exactly as I said…Intentions!

Well, enough already, lets get on with it and let you know how the weekend went from my view, as you’ll probably remember from my last Blog about Cadwell Park we treated that whole weekend as nothing more than an extended test in order to get us into as good a position as we could possibly be heading into the Showdown part of the series, I quite obviously wasn’t overly ecstatic with leaving Cadwell with a 20 odd points lead in the Championship yet heading into Donington Park 7 points behind but all of that was completely irrelevant as we just needed to get out there, get on it and do our best to beat the rest, that, was the cunning plan!!!

It all started off good to finishing the 1^st dampish session right near the front after with a fairly decent initial feeling from the bike despite the iffy conditions.

The afternoon session was completely dry and immediately I went quite a bit quicker than the morning session to the tune of about 2 seconds per lap but with that increasein lap time came a bike that felt really good and pretty relaxed to one that felt like being sat on a razor blade i.e. you were gonna be jumping off pretty quickly!!! I couldn’t believe the difference and to be honest if I didn’t know better I would’ve thought I was on two completely different motorcycles, I wasn’t overly worried though as the fact we were once again right up there gave me comfort and I knew Chris and the boys would only make the bike better as the weekend wore on.

We spent a fair bit of Saturday’s morning session waiting for the track to dry out as overnight rain had made it far from ideal, we learnt a couple of bits and pieces from the session though and continued working chassis wise to get things closer to where we’d need to be for the afternoons qualifying sessions.

All tucked in!!!

Heading into the first session we were trying a slight modification to the chassis to help me to get the bike turning better, I’d been complaining a bit that on the brakes hard or with a lot of weight on the front tyre the bike would steer good but as soon as I released the brake or flicked the bike in without loading the front good the bike just didn’t want to hook around a corner causing me to run wide by the apex then even wider on corner exit, when I got to the garage before the session and Chris explained what he’d seen on the data I decided to go two steps rather than one and during the first session made small additional steps too.

The second session was quite frustrating, I knew I had a good lap time in me, certainly fast enough for a front row but after just one flying lap it was obvious it wasn’t going to come in this session, that said we did enough to get through to the last session so hopefully it would come in the 3^rd and final session.

Unfortunately it was once again blatantly obvious after just one flying lap that this final tyre wasn’t to be the one either, I was laying 4^th so on the front row at that point in time but I pulled in straight after the first lap as I wasn’t sure if there was anything to do to help my problems and Chris made a quick change but despite this on my out lap down through Craner curves and into the Old hairpin the rear started to once again chatter and skipped around on me, the inconsistency lately has been shocking, I wasn’t a happy boy I can assure you as by the end of the session I’d dropped to 5th!!

For the first time pretty much ever I think we used a new rear tyre for morning warm up as it was important to press on to a certain degree to check out our latest chassis changes and the session went pretty well, you cant read a lot into morning warm up lap times but we were right on the money regardless so fingers crossed for the races..

Talking of which I had a plan for the races, it’s not very often I can state that, generally if you asked I’d simply say yeah, the plan is to win but this time round I knew that the Yamahas of Tommy and Michael as well as Hopper were particularly strong, my plan was to just get stuck in, proper, I knew that if they got clear track they’d be difficult to stay with so I knew I had to be a massive pest in the early laps then see how things shook out later in the races, that was the plan anyway!!!

Well as the lights went out to start race 1 you could definitely say things went completely to plan, starting 5^th on the grid so 2^nd row I got a good launch and made my way towards the inside on the run into Redgate, I waited until the guys just in front braked then braked myself as hard as I dare and ran up the inside of everyone to take the lead, perfect, that’s part of the plan sorted, over the 1^st lap I had a bit of a dice with Michael Laverty and got in behind him for a lap, our 1^st flying lap was my fastest of the weekend which boded well, I managed to put a pass back on Michael down into the Old Hairpin and lead from then right through to about lap 10 I think, Tommy Hill put a move on me into Goddards (the final turn) that sent us both wide and allowed Michael and Hopper to pass the pair of us which was a bit frustrating as by this point I was already suffering a bit with some rear grip issues and vibrations, immediately I re passed Tommy into turn 1 and even had a look at Hopper too on the exit and run down through the top of Craner curves, a lap or so later Tommy had another lunge but this time we nearly went to the edge of the track so the front two got a bigger gap, by this point things had gone down hill a bit more for me and I couldn’t keep the pace so I dropped back and ended up a fairly lonely 4^th which was really annoying, after the race we checked the rear tyre and it had spun on the rim throwing the wheel out of balance but not only that it had actually cold torn a little bit too, sounds daft I know but basically we had to make some changes for race two to actually make the tyre have a slightly harder life so that it didn’t rip up so bad…. Either that or I needed to try harder ha ha ha!!

With the changes made to the bike I was ready once again for action, race 2’s plan was identical to race 1, be a pest initially then see where we were at after a while, because of the lap times from race 1 I was starting the second race from P2 behind Hopper which gave me a much better shot at making my plan come to fruition, I got a good start as the lights went out and matched Hopper on the run down to turn one, I was on the inside of him thinking I’m not braking until you do, I’m not braking until you do and the instant he hit the brakes I hit mine and ran up the inside of him, I went in there pretty quick but still got turned for the apex and was already thinking good drive, get good drive when I felt a big bang in the side and suddenly found myself riding a Swan Yamaha as well as my HM Plant Honda towards the gravel trap, I couldn’t believe it, surely that never happened…

The moment it all went so wrong :-(

as we came to a standstill with my clutch in and engine running I jumped up quickly checked my bike which apart from a bent brake lever seemed fine and got back on track as quick as I possibly could, this people was gonna be damage limitation taken to a whole new level, I got up to speed as quick as possible, repassed the course car into the esses and from then on in just had it lit, I set the fastest lap of the race on lap 2 despite a moment down Craner Curves which in hindsight I’m glad happened, at the moment I have to concentrate too hard on riding my bike rather than racing the track and I’ve explained that to the team ona number of occasions this year so me in full on attack mode racing the track not the bike caused the exact problem I’d been telling them about all weekend, quite often my comments are that I can only ride the bike to 100% of its ability but not to mine which might sound a little daft but basically it’s me saying I could change direction quicker but it will do that or I could flick the bike in faster but it would to that and the moment at Craner was a prime example and showed the team on the data exactly what it is I’m talking about when I say it, funny enough the exact same thing happened at Cadwell the other week!!!

Using all the track and more trying to catch back up!!!

Anyway, moving on I just kept going and going as fast as I could and kept a much better rhythm than I had in race 1, the changes Chris had made definitely improved things a bit, I treated every lap that I wasn’t lining up people like an all out Superpole lap and eventually got up to 8^th position, obviously this was Very far from ideal, we were or should I say are well and truly on the back foot Championship wise which is a bit frustrating, don’t get me wrong I hold nothing whatsoever against M Lav, he along with the rest of us fighting for the title are being forced to do things and put under unnecessary pressure because of the stupid championship format, how a championship that’s run over 12 rounds or whatever it is can then be decided over 175 points is beyond me, it’s going to induce risky maneuvers and guys pushing over the limit because we have no choice if we want to be Champion but hey ho, hopefully there’ll be big crowds at the final three rounds to see it all unfold…..

I feel particularly gutted for my HM Plant team over the course of the weekend, both Kiyo and myself struggled a bit through practice then Kiyo had a problem with his bike which meant a retirement from race 1 and I had the drama in race two which only netted me a 4^th and an 8^th, not what we turned up for at all bit on a positive note hopefully that’s our bad luck been and gone, sure we’re a good chunk of points behind now but anything can happen and I promise I’ll be coming out swinging at Silverstone trying my absolute best to get things turned around!!

A massive thanks for all your support over the course of the season, and thanks to to my Team and everyone around me, I guess the biggest thanks has to go to my wife for not firing out our 2^nd child whilst I was in the middle of the races and on that note I’ve got to get cracking as we’ve got a baby to have now in between now and Silverstone…hopefully!!!

Take it easy, Shakey #67

Testing, testing, 1,2,3 testing!!! Cadwell Park

2011-09-04T22:12:00.003+02:00

I have to say Cadwell park was destined to be a strange weekend from the word go, fortunately for me and the HM Plant Honda team we’d already qualified for the shoot out part of the season but with some new parts failing to turn up the week before for the test we had the weekend was pretty much going to be all about testing and putting ourselves in the best possible situation going forward.

For pretty much the 1^st time ever too I was actually alone all the way up until Sunday afternoon as Reg my driver/right hand man was away on holiday and my wife’s so pregnant now that we could literally be becoming parents for the 2^nd time any minute now so she stayed home to rest. It felt really strange being at a circuit alone, certainly made me realise what goes into the whole weekend!!!

The 1^st session was a strange one indeed, we started with the bike as we’d finished the test the week before and within a lap and a half I’d both gone pretty fast and also been off the bike nearly 4 times including a big run on at the bottom of the mountain, I pitted pretty much straight away convinced there was something wrong with my front tyre as I’d never nearly lost the front so many times in one weekend as I did in that lap and a half!!!! I exited again with a new front tyre and settled in a little bit slower this time working through a few bits and pieces throughout the session.

Hi mum!!! ;-)

For the afternoon session we were due to test our new swing arm, well, mother nature had other ideas, half way through the day it absolutely lashed down, I’m not talking about a spot of rain I mean proper rain so obviously any dry time on the track was all but impossible, when the afternoon session started we sat it out for all but about 5 minutes from the end, to be honest the majority of the track was dry or at least had a dry line but the last two corners, well, I would’ve been faster around them on a jet ski!! Despite the fact we had an intermediate front and a used slick rear I got a bit of a feel for the new swing arm and that was about it, that said I did up P1 after about 3 or 4 flying laps so it wasn’t all bad!!!

Rubbing my hands at the prospect of the trick swing arm!!

That evening I went round to see Gary Mason for a bit and Rat Boy (Stuart Easton) came around, it was real good sat talking to them, listening to some of the shit that Rat Boy’s had to go through was unreal, the way he told his stories had me in stitches, funny now obviously but far from it back when he got hurt….

Our final free practice session was dry and gave me a bit more of a chance to evaluate things chassis wise, the session went ok but whilst I was sure there were some good points to the new swing arm there were also a couple of slightly weaker areas too, we spent the session working through a few changes to the bike in order to help out but it became as I said at the head of the Blog obvious that this weekend was going to become the test that we never got to carry out the week before!!!

Bit of air over the mountain!!!

For the afternoons qualifying sessions it was time for a bit more chassis work, we knew we’d easily be cool for the first session to get through to the 2^nd session and that we’d also probably be cool for the top 8 too so we treated all sessions in exactly the same way, somewhat disappointingly for me I could only manage 6^th place in the final session for a couple of reasons, one because the new swing arm didn’t complement the softer tyre and two because the final soft rear didn’t seem quite as good as the other two I’d used previously.

After the superpole sessions we didn’t have long to get ready for the 1^st race, we worked through the data from qualifying etc to come up with something to help with rear grip and decided to give it a go in the race.

Who you looking at!!!????

If you watched the race you will of seen that I got an absolutely dire start, it was kind of my fault but also a technical problem too, basically to make a start I have a sequence of lights that need to be lit to assure me perfect rpm, well, I was trying to get them lit but no amount of throttle seemed to light them to the point where I already knew I was well past where I normally am throttle position wise, whilst concentrating on the dash and trying to sort everything everybody just went, I wasn’t even looking at the start lights at the time!!!! Needless to say I got a dreadful start and settled in around 8^th I think, I managed topick of a few immediately and got myself on the back of the battle for the podium being led at a pretty slow pace by Michael Rutter, Josh Brookes was immediately in front of me but every time I looked at passing him he was looking at passing Rutter which was making things particularly tricky!!! I kept seeing Josh look at Michael into Hall bends but Michael was pretty strong into there, Josh looked on four or five laps before getting a particularly good launch over the mountain and looking like he fully meant it this time, I was right on the back of the two of them and to be honest my immediate thought was result, that’s at least a podium for me, it’s not that I wanted them to go down I could just see they were going to tangle and the chances were one if not both of them would run off track as whilst Josh had a good run and more momentum than Michael I think he just didn’t quite get alongside enough for Michael to see his wheel and either a) let him through or b) try to defend hence the reason there was such a big collision, I think Michael never actually knew he was there, anyway, to cut a long story short not long after the race got red flagged whilst I was lining up Josh so I ended up 4^th, however, later that evening I learnt that Josh had been excluded so I ended up with 3^rd.

We made yet another plan going forward for the 1st race on Monday after testing a couple of bits and pieces in the morning warm up session and all I really wanted was a good start, this time I got it and ran well, I made a pass at the end of the straight to get into third and was highly relieved when the two Yamahas didn’t disappear off into the distance, I managed to pass Michael Laverty and was sitting 2^nd watching Tommy’s every move tryingto suss out a) where we were stronger and b) what else we could do to improve our bike, Michael eventually passed me back but I finished literally a couple of seconds off of the win so I was relatively happy. One of my biggest problems was corner entry instability and after studying more data Chris decided on a completely different plan of attack which involved a completely different spec of rear shock which had helped us in the past and different fork springs, the final race was once again going to be interesting!!!

For the final race I started P2 due to the lap times from the earlier race and I felt much better sat on the front row, I got a fairly good start although not perfect so held my position up through the first couple of turns, M Lav had grabbed the holeshot but I managed to slip past him and lead for the first lap and a half, to be honest I already knew early on that we’d gone the wrong way rear shock wise but I figured if I just kept consistent and tried to make no mistakes we should be on for at least another podium, I thought that just as I back shifted 2^nd to 1^st into the tight chicane after Mansfield corner and the next thing I knew the bike went quiet and I realised I’d hot a neutral, I’ll not swear now but a word beginning with B and roughly sounding similar to trollocks went through my mind immediately!!! I rejoined the track in 4^th and unfortunately that’s where I ended up, a pretty unhappy 4^th, not even a podium!!

In the lead albeit very briefly!!!!

Looking on the Brightside we were in an extremely fortunate position to be able to test so much stuff over the course of the weekend, Chris and I have spent loads of time in debrief as well as a load of time on the phone to each other to try to push things forward as quick as possible with the swing arm and I believe the team have already come to a conclusion and spoken with the manufacturer who agrees totally with them regarding what modifications are required in order to push forward and improve the bike, I’m really happy that we got to run so many different settings through the swing arm and got a good chunk of the development done before heading into the Showdown part of the championship. One thing I am pretty pissed about though is that despite the fact I’ve lead the Championship all year I actually go into the Showdown 7 points I think behind Tommy, that said I guess the pressure’s on him now so if we can continue working on the HM Plant Honda and luck goes our way then things could pan out pretty good, I’m certainly feeling fit and up for the challenge so bring on the next round, the gloves are off now!!!!!

Brands Hatch GP....

2011-08-10T15:45:00.003+02:00

Brands Hatch GP circuit, one of my favourite race tracks in the world, I simply couldn’t wait to get out on track for my 1^st ever triple header weekend, well, couldn’t wait until Saturday should I say because on the Friday all we had all day literally was one half an hour test session on the short Indy circuit!!

Friday was the strangest day ever, we’re so used to having two sessions one in the morning and one in the afternoon that sitting around all day until about 2-30pm or whenever it was we got out was almost more tiring than actually riding, it just didn’t seem right being there but not actually being out on track.

Some deemed the half an hour session on the short circuit a waste of time and Hopper for instance didn’t even bother venturing out but for me and my team this was a pretty big opportunity, after Oulton Park my crew chief Chris cameup with a completely new chassis setting that we needed to test, when I say completely different I mean completely different, now you could say that testing it on the short circuit wouldn’t really tell us much but the thing is we raced there earlier in the year so we knew what lap time was sensible and by using the half an hour session we’d lose no time should it be no good and be able to start Saturday with our more conventional setting so for us it was a win win situation, as it turned out the new setting felt pretty good, obviously with such a drastic change it was never going to be perfect straight away but there was definitely potential there, a few tweeks throughout the half hour session saw us finish up P2 I think or maybe P3 but my fastest lap was my last on tyres that had done the whole session showing that obviously we were making progress, I know Brands Indy is tight but to end up just 1 10^th of a second off I felt pretty happy and confident that the following day we could make some bigger changes and really start heading in a good direction but little did I know…..

Without being negative I almost feel the less said about Saturday the better, it started, continued and ended being one of those days you just want to end as soon as possible before anything else went wrong!!

We had problem after problem in the two morning sessions and myguys worked incredibly hard to keep us in a position to get out on track, the big plus initially was that despite the fact we struggled to get more than two consecutive laps in at a time when we did hit the track we went immediately P1 so it wasn’t all bad!!

Having the race on the Saturday couldn’t possibly have worked out worse for us, I’m not kidding when I tell you that I’d maybe done 20 laps all day Saturday before the race and to make matters worse it started to spit with rain just before the race was due to get underway, because of this we got a 7 minute wet practice session which I decided to use to take a look around and understand the condition of the track, I’d decided that it was wet enough…just for wets and if the rain continued it was only going to get wetter so I went to the grid on wets, typically though the rain stopped, my guys got enough time to change the rear back to an intermediate but ran out of time to change the front, this was going to be a long old race now!!!

As the lights went out I got a pretty good start and went around the outside for the lead,

I lead for about 2 or 3 laps but with the rain stopped my front tyre felt like chewing gum, I knew a decent result was out of the question and that I was only going to go backwards so I pitted and used the change of tyres rule to try for a fast lap on slicks so that I’d start the 1^st of Sundays races from a decent grid position, this worked out perfectly and we managed P3 for the following race, I couldn’t believe the amount of controversy my race caused though, a whole bunch of people kicked off because I re passed the podium battle, the problem was that after being in the pits to change tyres I had no idea who was in what position so I was simply trying to un lap myself and make up as much time as possible…

Unfortunately for me Sunday morning started off pretty much the same as Saturday had, ie with problems, we used the tyres from the day before in order to go beyond race distance so that we knew we’d be ok but I was hampered big time by chatter from the rear end of the bike, because we’d made some changes for the warm up we couldn’t be sure whether it was the changes, the track temperature, the surface after the heavy rain or what it was that was causing it so we went back to what we had the day before and crossed our fingers for the 1^st race..

As the lights went out I got a pretty good start, Lascorz moved across on me which blocked me a little but nevertheless I exited turn one comfortably in 4^th, after a lap or so Rutter put a move on Lascorz and pushed him a little wide so I managed to sneak up the inside at the exit of Paddock, a lap or so later I passed Rutter up into Druids before setting off after a fast starting Tommy Hill, I caught him in a couple of laps and felt more than comfortable riding behind him, I knew I could lap faster so I lined up a move and managed to pass him into Surtees at which point I chewed the screen, shut my eyes and pushed hard for a few laps, I did indeed lap faster but the problem was Tommy tagged on the back of me and no matter what I did I kept getting +0 on my pitboard,at that point I figured the thing to do was to settle down a little to preserve my rear tyre for a few laps, I dropped down to like mid to low 1.27’s with +0still on my board. With 7 laps to go I went for it again and immediately dropped to mid 1.26’s to try to break Tommy but again my board said +0, with about 3 or 4 laps to go Tommy put a move on me into Paddock but it was almost an exact replica of my move on him back in Easter and he immediately ran wide, I got straight back up the inside and pushed to the max again for the last few laps and managed to hold it to the chequered flag to take my first win since way back at Thruxton, I was absolutely delighted and felt it was just what my team deserved after such an incredibly difficult weekend so far!!!!

Post race celebration!!!

Post podium pose!!!

Rolling out towards the grid for the sighting lap of race 2 of the day something just didn’t feel right, I had in two new tyres and immediately I felt a bit of vibration from the right hand side of the rear tyre, I mentioned it to Chris on the grid and to be on the safe side we fired in a spare rear just to be sure. I got another reasonable start and slotted straight in P3 behind Tommy and Hopper and do you know what the most frustrating thing in the world is….knowing your doomed from there on in, the new rear tyre had exactly the same feeling like the one we took out, don’t get me wrong, Tommy set a better pace in the first few laps but initially I could keep up but as things got worse as the race wore on I knew it was going to be difficult to even stay on the podium let alone fight for another win, I pushed as hard as I could around the problem to try to keep Michael Laverty behind me and just about pulled it off to hang on for third, it’s really funny in a way though because when you won the first race you feel almost gutted about a third, I know I couldn’t possibly have done anymore with what I had though and feel pretty confident that we could’ve ran with Tommy and Hopper if we hadn’t of had the problem.

Looking forward now I’m hoping we’re going to be able to improve a little, I believe there’s some new parts coming for our bikes which should help in a few areas and should allow us to more comfortably follow the chassis setting route I mentioned earlier so I’m looking forward to that, I know we have two evenings testing coming up ahead of the next round at Cadwell park so hopefully we’ll be able to make some positive steps there.

In a way I guess I’m pretty happy with our weekends work, it certainly felt good to win again for the first time in ages, I’m happy that we’re the first ones through to the shootout, I’m happy that we may have found a good direction with the bike but above all that I’m a bit annoyed that something so simple and so out of our control can once again have such a big effect on the outcome of a race, with this shootout being run over 6 races lets keep our fingers crossed that this issue doesn’t arise again!!!

Thanks as ever for all the support track side, thanks to my HM Plant Honda team, and I hope you enjoyed both the racing and my take on it all in this blog!!!

Take it easy, Shakey #67

Oulton park, round 7!!!

2011-07-26T20:15:00.003+02:00

Well I think its fair to say that round seven never went quite to plan!!! In fairness our second visit to Oulton Park this year got off to a far better start than the 1^st but as you’ve probably already seen the end result of the weekend was far from what I was hoping for.

Getting back to the beginning of the weekend our first free practice session was dry and I was relatively happy to end the first session P3, that was probably frommemory about 10 places better than the first visit here!!!, that said we still had quite a bit of work to do, we fired a new spec shock into the bike that we’d tried briefly at Thruxton and decided to stick with it as there were some definite positives to be had from it corner exit wise but the problem with it was that it was making the bike transfer it’s weight in a slightly different way making getting stopped and corner entry pretty tricky.

We continued working on the shock in the afternoon session although we tried going in a slightly different direction with it but what we tried didn’t really work that well, yes we got a bit of feeling back for the front of the bike but we lost a bit of the original benefit on corner exit, what with that and the fact that a few of the other riders started throwing soft tyres at their bikes we dropped down the order a little to about 8^th I think, this was going to be a tricky old weekend!!!!

Pushing on out of Druids...

Saturday mornings session came with the forecast rain well and truly in effect, about 6 or 7 of the top guys including Kiyo and myself all fell off pretty much on the out lap, I couldn’t believe it, I’d had a big moment on my out lap and nearly high sided at about 20mph so I thought I’d do one lap just to check the lake that usually forms at turn one then come in to check that everything was ok with the bike as the near miss I’d had shouldn’t in normal wet conditions have happened, the lake I mentioned wasn’t too bad at all so I thought rightI’ll pull in this lap and get the guys to check everything, as I arrived at the Shell Oils hairpin I gently rolled in, went up the bank a bit in case anyone was on line and going for it then when I saw no one behind I went back on line, gently touched the throttle and then the next thing I knew I was up over the high side and pirouetting round and round, the funny thing was though as I spun around and was pointing in the direction I’d just come from I saw James Ellison doing exactly the same thing in tandem with me, fortunately both the bike and I were fine so I picked it up and rode back to the bits, not an ideal start to the session!!!

Two times i nearly fell off on the out lap here, 2 times!!!

The boys fixed my foot peg etc that had got damaged whilst the organizers looked into a track inspection to see why on earth so many riders had fallen and eventually the session was restarted and we got back out, it took me a bit of time to get going as I had massive rear grip and feeling issues that gave me no confidence whatsoever, I even wound my traction aid right up to pretty much max and that was doing absolutely nothing to assist me as the slides and out of the seat moments were happening so fast on such a tiny difference of throttle percentage that the system had no hope, we made various changes throughout the session and eventually I think we ended up 4^th or somewhere around there but I was far, and I mean farfrom happy!!!

Fortunately Superpole was dry, this however threw up it’s own little problems aswe hadn’t had a chance to fix the bike in either the wet or the dry so setting wise it was going to be a bit of a gamble, that said we knew we’d be fast enough on a race tyre to give ourselves a shot on one rear shock then to make a decision as to whether or not we needed to change again, we got straight through on the harder race tyre but did need to make some changes for the second session, as well as the changes we needed to try the softer tyre too in order to pull back a bit of time, the only problem with that was that sometimes as was the case at Snetterton the soft tyre really effects our bike in a strange way, it brings on big problems corner entry wise but then has real good grip on exit, fingers crossed that wouldn’t be the case here!!!

Over hill top, i improved here this time around...

Well with the softer option tyre we managed a pretty good lap time in Superpole 2, the tyre did give us a little bit of chatter but to be honest it was difficult to know if it came from the tyre or the increase in lap time, either way though we were through to the final session which as you’ll know for me is sometimes not possible as twice this year I’ve thrown the bike at the scenery before going through!!!!

I knew that a front row was going to be difficult as the two Yamaha’s were working incredibly well as was Hopper along with a couple of others but fortunately for me it all came together quite well so we did indeed end up P4, in all honesty I was extremely happy with that and its not very often I say that about 4^th place!!!

Cracking on on route to P4...

For the morning warm up we had a little bit more work to do, we needed to test another setting to be sure we had a good race setting for the dry but the weather had some other ideas, the rain came before we went out so we got a bit more time to work on our wet setting instead, to be honest I never drove myself too mad during the session as I once again as was the case in the previous wet session had more than my fair share of moments so I built up real slowly..

It was looking like the weather was in for the day and with only anhour between the start of morning warm up and the start of race 1 we had our work cut out trying to improve our rear grip and stability but I knew Chris my technician would come up with something!!

As the lights went out to start race 1 I got a real good start, I ran into turn 1 behind Hopper but he got in a little deep so on the run down to Cascades I managed to sneak past and from there on in I lead for the first few laps, I have to tell you I was more than having a little chuckle in my helmet, as you will have see if you watched the race I was absolutely useless and the setting we’d chosen for the rear of my bike just wasn’t working at all, I don’t think I’ve ever been out of the seat so many times in one race and was almost convinced I’d end up going down at some point, I couldn’t even touch the throttle mid corner let alone wind it on so god knows how I lead the race,

I have absolutely no idea how i pulled this off!!!

Hopper came past and I managed to get him back but eventually he made it stick so I just tried my hardest without over stepping the mark to hang onto him, eventually Tommy Hill came past too and after that the course car came out for a few laps and that’s when my biggest problems started because the slower pace behind the course car allowed my rear tyre to lose what little temperature it had in it so when the car went in for three laps it was like being on ice, after we got going Rutter passed me but I got him back but with only a few laps remaining and me struggling everywhere I knew he’d be back past by the end of the race the drive he was getting on corner exits would make it impossible nigh on to keep him behind, sure enough my weakest area on the track Druids (the penultimate corner) I had a reasonable exit but not perfect, I moved to the right a little to protect my line but Rutter passed me into the final turn, I knew there was no way I’d out drag him to the line but I had a good go and got spat out of the seat again coming onto the start finish so that was that, a pretty shit 4^th place, that said though considering how utterly useless I felt and how I had to ride I can’t believe we finished as high as 4^th!!!

For race two we’d made a plan and a fundamental change setting wise was fired into the bike, it was blatantly obvious from my rear tyre which still looked like new that the bike was putting nowhere near enough force into the tyre so it basically wasn’t getting hot so it was like riding with no grip whatsoever, I was really looking forward to the second race as I felt I’d be able to lap at least a second or so faster if I could actually use the throttle to drive the bike off the corners but it wasn’t until a fair bit later that due to the continuing rain the meeting had to be abandoned as the track was pretty flooded which was a big shame as I was right up for putting things right in race two!!!!

The team and I had a pretty long debrief after everything had settled down about what we needed in order to move forward a bit with the bike and I’m sure the guys are going to come up with some stuff pretty soon, I’m not sure anything will be ready for Brands but hopefully not long after so I’m looking forward to that.

On reflection Oulton wasn’t really too bad for us, if the Championship was run in the correct way i.e. over a season then I would’ve extended my actual lead but it isn’t so it means naff all which is bloody annoying but I’m still tied at the top of the podium credits with Tommy so from that point of view its all cool too.

Now it’s back to my home circuit, Brands Hatch long circuit, hopefully we’ll be well and truly back to winning ways there!!!!! Take it easy, Shakey #67

Snetterton...

2011-07-06T10:38:00.003+02:00

I think every rider including me must be looking forward to the first race here at Snetterton on the new "300" layout. Our weekend got off to a pretty good start with a dealer event at Honda in Norwich, there must of been around 100 odd people that showed up to meet Kiyo and I so we had a really good evening.

As far as riding goes the 1st session went pretty much to plan, we knew what we needed to try and used tyres from the previous Knockhill round to get dialled in, there were no surprises at the top of the time sheets with Hopper going fastest straight away withhis team mate right with him, those guys tested here last week and that obviously stood them in good stead, I split them for a bit but dropped back to 5th at the end of the session when a few riders fired in their new tyres. We knew what we wanted from the bike and my engineer Chris could see the issues I was having in the first session so I looked forward to the afternoon session!!

Session two was both good and bad in equal amounts really, pretty much immediately I went P1 on a fresh set of tyres 1.2 seconds and remained there until most of the way throughout the session but after a good few laps I started to run into some issues with chatter from the rear tyre which were pretty difficult to ride around, at the end of the session we put in a new rear tyre and I had no doubt whatsoever that I'd be able to go a fair chunk faster, on my first flying lap I got badly blocked in the "car park" section and then I pushed hard on my second lap and ran pretty much immediately into the same chatter issues that we'd had on the old tyrebefore which wasn't at all what I'd expected, quite a few of the boys fired in new tyres at the end and the fact that I never improved lap times wise dropped me down to about 8th which wasn't ideal at all however ideal times wise put me third fastest and a tenth of a second off so things are far from doom and gloom!!

Contemplating our next plan of attack!!!

Saturday morning things started to take a bit of a turn for the better to a certain degree, from a race tyre point of view I used the tyres that I'd used the day before and immediately dropped into the 1.48's which was good and then I maintained a run of low 49's for a good few laps which overall is a pretty good rhythm. Towards the end of the session we planned to use the softer rear tyre in order to see what it would do for us lap time wise, we knew that a lot of the others had been doing race runs and then banging in the soft tyre to jump up the order at the end of the sessions and needed to see how it would work for us, I banged it in and felt very confident I could go a very good chunk faster however whilst it had much better grip entering the corner onto the back straight I closed the throttle to peel in and the bike bounced from the rear almost right around on me, I just managed to catch it then peeled in again and it did exactly the same thing, I ended up not even going as fast as I had on the race tyre and together withmy engineer weknew that if we wanted to make the bike work good in Superpole on the soft tyre we definitely had more work to do!!

For the first of the three Superpole sessions we started with a new front and a new soft rear in order to see if the chassis changes we made would make the bike work the softer tyre better, I was pleasantly surprised when I found we'd gone a good way to fixing the problem and found around half a second, It was a good enough lap time to match Hopper and Kirkham with the three of us on 1.48.5.

For the second session we fired in a new rear tyre again and I started my first flying lap, everything was going really good, I saw a yellow flag just after the stadiumsection because someone had run off track, I looked around onto the back straight and saw it was Peter Hickman, unfortunately though I don't think he saw me, as we approached the chicane at the end of the back straight Peter was neither on it or off it and I had to barge my way through pretty aggressively totally unimpressed with the fact he was on line but not pushing hard, my next flying lap though was mega, I hit every pretty much every apex and absolutely totally for the first time all weekend loved it, sure the lap could've been a tiny bit tidier and I could still go a bit faster but when I saw a 1.47.8 or whatever it was I was made up, I even did an extra lap to see what my pitboard said and sure enough it said P1, that was the first 47 of the whole weekend so I was properly pumped and ready for a big attack in the final session!!!

For the final session we started with two new tyres and as I said I was right up for it,after a steady ish warm up lap I got onto the start finnish straight and thought right this is it, let's go, as I got on the brakes though for turn 1 and shifted back to 4th I flicked the bike in and it chattered a bit, not terrible but enough for me to think oh no, please tell me it's not gonna be the same as the morning session tyre, before I knew it I was chattering my way into turn two, then three, four, five and then entering turn 5 the whole bike chattered so bad I almost fell off, I knew then due to the short final session it was going to be touch and go to get back and get another tyre so I completed the lap only to see a 1.48.9, I was absolutely livid and got back to the pits as quick as I possibly could without falling off, when my boys told me in the box there was no time to fire in a used tyre I lost the plot a bit and left the box, I felt so pissed off for me and my boys, we'd worked so hard since the morning to get the bike towork on the soft tyre then get let down with a tyre problem that makes you just about stay up and lap 1.2 slower than the previous session, needless to say my position was far from the pole I thought we may be capable off but a thoroughly disappointing 6th place, I was not a happy boy at all!!!!

For morning warm up we headed out on the race tyres we'd be using for the two races and had a pretty good run, I went P1 pretty much immediately and did a consistent run in mid to high 1.48's which was my best race pace so far for the weekend, the only problem was though we were stiff suffering a little bit from vibration from the rear of the bike so we knew we'd have to make a few little changes for the first race then kind of suck it and see and make any necessary changes if needed for race 2 after looking at race ones data.

To be perfectly honest with you I almost feel the less said about race one the better,don't get me wrong, we got a podium but there was no satisfaction from it for me whatsoever, in the beginning of the race I felt fine and the bike was working good but after the safety car incident I really started to suffer, my bike lost all grip from the rear in the entry to pretty much every corner and I just started dropping further and further back, let me tell you there's absolutely nothing worse than seeing your two biggest current championship rivals starting to pull away from you yet sitting on top of a bike that if you try to push even a 10th of a second harder you'd end up on your backside, I was not a happy boy after the race whatsoever and Chris and I immediately sat down to discuss the changes we'd need to make to the bike in order to be both more competitive as well as getting better tyre wear from the rear of the bike.

Us three seem to be spending a fair bit of time together lately ;-)

Race two had to be a totally different affair for me, I wanted to come out all guns blazing and get back on the top step, the only place I felt my team and I deserved after all the hard work we'd put in over the course of the weekend, however my eagerness cost me dearly off the start when I pretty much dumped the clutch and bogged the engine as the lights went out, you knob head was all I kept telling myself on the run up to turn one, you know how to make things difficult for yourself!!!

After a couple of laps I'd slotted myself into 4th place but then shortly after before I'd had a chance to make any more progress the red flags came out so the race was stopped.

The bike had felt ok in the first few laps so with the organisers deciding that part two of the race would be run over 10 laps we never changed a thing.

For the restart I got a better start and had a couple of turns tussling with Kiyo then next on the horizon was Josh, I passed him after a lap or two and then set offafter Hopper who'd already put a bit of a gap into us all, the lap times I was doing were almost hard to believe and it didn't take too long before I was closing in on his back wheel and taking a good long look at potential passing places, there seemed to be plenty of places I could make time on him but his bike was a little bit stronger than ours on the straights so I knew I was going to have to get pretty creative to take the win.

A few corners after this it all went wrong!!!

On the penultimate lap I put a move on to him up the inside at Coram which worked perfectly, fortunately I kept a good tight line and made the pass clean, I made a pretty wide entry onto the start finish straight to try as hard as in could to get maximum drive otherwise I knew he'd pass me before turn one and that worked out cool, turn two I entered slightly tight and again all was cool, I got a decent run through three and fully expected him to try to pass into the Agostini hairpin which he did but fortunately he ran in too deep and I got back underneath him, my run through turn 5 was good and I set myself well for turn 6 and then the next thing I knew there was a bang and we collided, unfortunately for me Hopper got into turn 6 so hot that he punted me out of the track and into the grass, as you can probably imagine right there and then I was far from impressed, Hopper and I had a second or so over the guys behind and were almost creation of a one two and an extended championship and podium credit advantage but for me anyway all that was gone and I ended up 4th with Hopper 3rd.

I found out afterwards that I'd done the fastest lap of the race but to be honest that wasn't really doing much in the way of consolidation, at least though Kiyo took the win so I was happy for the team in general.

Hopper came to my motorhome a little while after to apologise for the coming together so we had a chat and everything's cool now between us, I felt gutted that we ended up 3rd and 4th though as this had been apart from maybe the first Oulton round probably the hardest we'd had to work all year to be competitive and I have to say a massive thanks to Chris and my boys for all their hard work, I'm gutted I couldn't give them a win but it wasn't for a lack of trying!!!!

Abou the only consolidation of race 2, The fastest lap!!

Take it easy guys and girls, Shakey #67

Knockhill...

2011-06-27T15:07:00.003+02:00

After the previous round back at Thruxton I was really looking forward to getting out on track at Knockhill, we gained some valuable information at Thruxton that we hoped would give us a good step forward in the dry, however it had to be in the dry and typically dry it wasn't!!!

I spent all weekend like this... in a coat!!!!

I have to say before I go any further how impressed I was with what the circuit owners have done since I was last there, if you watched back in 2008 you'll recall the big crash I had at turn 1, quite literally the instant I touched the brakes I was off and after sliding down the track I hit the curbs, took off and flew straight into the tyre wall, well now they've really opened that section right out so when you do have a moment or run straight on you can spend more time getting stopped before needing to turn which is much better, they've also built a proper pitcomplex with garages too which was somewhat of a necessity, also not that you can see it but they've done a whole load of drainage work too to stop all the rivers that run off the track in the wet turning into oceans so like I said I was well impressed!!

I've got to admit that we didn't exactly drive ourselves mad during the first days practice sessions, I went P1 pretty much as soon as I got out on track and stayed there both times until the last few minutes or so, we knew we had a pretty good wet setting from Thruxton although that said due to the nature of Knockhill and the drop in grip compared to Thruxton in the wet we had to soften the bike off a little bit more just to get some feeling, the biggest problem was actually rear corner entry grip, basically everything was cool until you peeled into a corner off the throttle and off the brakes then just as you thought all was cool the rear end would try to come around all on it's own making things a little bit tricky at times, especially at turn 1.

Using all the track in the wet, this would catch me out in Superpole!!!

Final free practice went well, the track had pretty much a dry line the whole way round, I really enjoyed the session which actually got extended due to ever improving conditions, I was quite comfortably fastest even though I concentrated on a few little issues, I knew we still had some time left both in me and in the bike too so this was positive heading into the next sessions which obviously were for grid position.

To be honest with you with you by this point all I really wanted was some full on dry time on track, I knew we could be competitive in the wet but with race days weather forecast being dry we needed to be sure we had a decent dry setting to, this however wasn't to be and the drizzle slowly but surely started to return.

Head down and tucked in!!!

We managed to blast through the first session easily using intermediate tires but it was going to be a race against time to get through all the sessions in this manner, I got straight though superpole 2 too also on the inters but there was no way that was going to happen in the final session when the rain started to come down far more heavily.

Quite a cool shot that!!!

We changed the bike back to a "wetter" setting and I headed out feeling positive, Hopper was about a second or two up the track and I planned to follow him using him as a marker, I did one flying lap basically just to get a feel for the circuit and the conditions then on the start of my next lap I thought right this is it, lets get on it, I had a good run down through turn 1, then the next couple of turns too, then a good drive up to the chicane, changed direction, picked up the throttle then BANG, down I went, I literally just caught the edge of the white line with the front tyre at the same time as the bike transferred a bit of weight towards the rear and that was it the front tucked and down I went, what a dick, that was all I could think as I barrel rolled through the wet mud and gravel, such a rookie mistake but at the same time a mistake that I’d gotten away with throughout the first two superpole sessions, gutted, nothing like making things difficult for yourself, mind you on a positive note at least I lasted all the way through to the final session this time around!!!!

Morning warm up was by far the driest the track had been, again it was a fun session and one that went pretty well for us, all we had to do now was sit tight and wait to see what the weather was going to do…

Well, the weather got drier, and drier, to the point where the track was completely dry for race 1, we had to gamble a bit setting wise and went with a setting very similar to the one that we used at Croft, obviously I couldn’t risk trying the settings we wanted to test that I mentioned at the beginning of this Blog but we figured we’d go safe and then try to make any necessary changes for race two.

Starting form the third row of the grid at Knockhill was never going to be easy, its completely different making up time and places somewhere like Thruxton compared to Knockhill, the latter being pretty one line in a lot of places with just the one big passing opportunity at the end of the lap into the hairpin.

As the lights went out for the start I rode straight down the outside towards turn 1, I got a fairy decent run through the first couple of turns and made up a couple of places to slot in around 6^th I think, I had Josh Brookes just in front and lined him up in a few places before making a move a couple of laps later into the hairpin, the only problem was that when I passed I got a bit crossed up and had to let the front brake off a bit to get straight and with that I ended up running wide and costing myself a load of time, a couple of laps later I made the pass again and that time made it stick, then it was a case of trying to bridge the gap up to the guys up front. With Knockhill being such a short lap it took a good few laps to catch and pass Gary Mason and with about 6 or 7 to go I passed him down into the hairpin and then immediately set about bridging the small gap to John Hopkins, I think my 2^nd to last lap was my fastest lap of the race and I did indeed manage to get on his back wheel, he was making a few little mistakes and I thought I would maybe be able to sneak 2^nd from him but in the end he held me off, luckily for me though my run through from 9^th earned me the 2^nd fastest lap so at least for race 2 I’d be starting from the front so I’d have half a chance of a good result.

We made some small changes to the bike for the 2^nd race as we’d really struggled for rear grip exiting the hairpin, it was so difficult to put the power down to the ground so we needed to work on that as with a good exit from there you can sometimes make a pass up over the start finish line.

I got a pretty good start and slotted immediately into 2^nd through turns 1 and 2 before nipping up the inside of Hopper into turn 3,

from there on in I tried to pull the pin and pretty much immediately opened up a second gap, I remember thinking bloody hell this is going to be a long old race, 30 laps with no margin for the slightest error, then a few laps in the course car came out, initially I was gutted because that broke my gap but when the lights went out on the course car I lined up for a good exit from the hairpin and managed to hold my lead, after I crossed the line though I saw the course car flag again and initially thought the marshalls must have not put them away yet but at turn 1 they were waving and as I dropped through turn 1 I saw Hopper trudging through the mud, this obviously made a big difference to the championship as he’s 2^nd to me at the minute, with racing resumed again I changed my start again by this time not nailing it immediately on the exit of the hairpin and instead waiting because I didn’t want anyone getting the jump on me, this plan worked too and I held the lead for a good few laps more, Tommy then passed me down into the hairpin but I got him back just driving back out, I lead again for another couple of laps and exactly the same thing, I just managed to get back passed on the run down to turn 1 but the third time Tommy passed me he held me off, he and I had already bashed fairings the whole way up the start finish straight a few times and with Hopper out I decided 2^nd and 20 points plus 2 podium credits was the best option, the Yamaha’s just seemed to be working that bit better than our bike at this track, to be honest it’s exactly what I’d expected and not every track is as stop start as Knockhill so things will even back out for sure, Tommy got about 2 seconds on me which he held but I had my hands full with the other Yamaha of his team mate M Lav, he kept me honest right until the end of the race so I ended with a 3^rd and a 2^nd which was far from dreadful but somehow things just don’t feel the same when you don’t win at least one!!!

After the race the team told me about Jason’s accident and it sounded pretty nasty so I had a quick shower and headed straight down to Dunfermline with my team boss to go to see him, unfortunately though it was pretty bad and when we got there he was being prepared for his initial operation to have his spleen removed so we didn’t get to see him.

The next morning though he was awake so I nipped in to see him before we headed off back down south, he was in good spirits if not a little groggy, he has to wait a few days to stabilize before they fix his broken leg and ankle so I guess the way to finish this blog is A to say a big thanks to HM Plant Honda for all their hard work over the weekend a B to say a massive get well soon to Jason. Take it easy guys and girls, Shakey #67

Holiday...NOT!!!!

2011-06-15T20:33:00.000+02:00

Hey guys and girls, thought i'd post a quick blog to bring you up to speed with what's been happening since after Thruxton. We were due to head straight back to Spain for two weeks holidays, that was the plan but a few bits and pieces came up that delayed our departure by a day or so which was a bit frustrating!! By the time we finally got home we'd been gone for 48 days, it doesn't sound a lot does it but turn it into almost two months and it sounds a bit longer, that amount of time without your own bed or away from your pets, in fact that amount of time away from HOME full stop grinds on you a little, it definitely had an effect on both my wife and I that's for sure because I don't think I've ever done so much grafting around the house as I did during this supposed break, I've been like a proper Jack of all trades, painting spare rooms, clearing some parts of a completely over grown garden including stabbing myself to bits trimming palm trees, tidying up my garage and generally sweeping up and tidying full stop. It was kind of weird because both Petra and I got back to Spain thinking we'd be flat out relaxing and getting some sun shine, enjoying a bit of a break but the weather for pretty much the whole 2 weeks was pretty crap, I got in no more than two or three cycle rides due to seemingly constant rain and thunderstorms and whenever the weather did brighten up a little I seemed to find myself battling through the jungle that used to be our garden!! In a funny kind of way though that sort of manual labour feels quite rewarding, I'm always right up for going at things like a bull in a China shop but generally don't get on with more detaily bits but this time around I was right amongst everything!!

We had a chance to get in to see our Dr who confirmed everything's going well with the pregnancy which was good news, I'm quite looking forward to the final 4d scan which we'll be getting soon in the UK, they're incredible, we still keep a photo of our son from a 4d scan that we had with him!!

I had a bit of a mission loading the Vito the other day ready to head back up to the UK, I think it works out another 5 or 6 weeks we'll be gone this time which makes packing a bit of a nightmare, that said we got it sorted and made our way north towards the UK, we had a complete and utter ball ache of a drive up though due to traffic around Paris but we got to the UK in the end, now though I'm hearing the seat belt sign and preparation for landing message on our flight up to Edinburgh so I've got to crack on, I'll keep you posted on Knockhill as soon as, take it easy, Shakey #67

Thruxton!!!

2011-05-31T22:45:00.003+02:00

I've got to admit I'd been looking forward to coming to Thruxton ever since we left Croft, I mean leaving a circuit that I'd never been on the podium at and one that the team struggled at last year having built up a lead in race 1 and then winning the second race filled me with confidence heading to a track that A I love and B the team won at last year!

Riding here is a real cool experience, the place is so fast generally and also has the fastest corner in British racing, aptly named "Church", we go from flat out in 5th back one gear, a dab of brakes then flick in, the exit kind of opens out which results in some full on maybe 130mph slides, I love it!

Our 1st session went really well, I got out on track and literally within 3 laps I set a time that only I bettered ever so slightly for the whole 45 minutes session, Tommy Hill got closest towards the end of the session but I still managed to remain just under half a second clear which was a right result, we managed to work through a few little bits and pieces too throughout the session in order to give us some direction for the afternoon session.

For the second session we got out and tried some new tires, I pushed quite hard initially and busted out a good few laps straight away, the laps felt pretty good but my lap timer didn't come up for the first two or three laps, I saw P1 on my board again but had no idea how fast I'd gone, it turned out at that point that I'd managed to go nearly three quarters of a second faster than the morning session. We had a plan in place for the second session though which included trying a couple of rear shocks as well as different ride heights etc, we managed to work through all the stuff we had and ran 2nd nearly the whole session to Tommy but not even a 10th of a second away, towards the end though I used another race tyre and managed to pull a few more tenths despite not managing a particularly good lap i managed to pull just over a quarter of a second clear.

Sunday mornings free practice went pretty good, we started the session on a used rear tyre from the day before in order to check our rhythm and to get an idea of how the bike was going to behave once we had getting towards race distance on it and that went pretty well, I put in a new soft rear at the end of the session as we needed to see if the soft one would help us outright lap time wise and it seemed to, the only problem was I towed around James Westmoreland and he pulped me to the top of the time sheets but by less than a tenth so it was all good.

For the 1st of the qualifying sessions we had a plan, we knew that just one average lap on new tires would be enough to get into the top 20 so I set off out to do the lap, as it was the bike felt real good on new race tires I did the fastest 1sector of the whole weekend on route towards the final chicane, the lap had been good and I knew that I could pull in straight afterwards as we had a few things we wanted to try with the bike before we put the softer tyre in for sessions two and three, however, I ran up into the chicane a tiny bit quick and had to make a pretty big deal of the left, I pulled it back well though and straightened the bike up for a strong exit to try to recover the time, the next thing I know the bike was properly sideways at which point it was going to be more luck than judgment as to whether it straightened out but at that point the traction cut quite hard due to the slide which snapped the bike back and sent my skywards, I landed with a bit of abang and properly knocked the wind out of myself for a minute or so, I hurtmy knee and had bashed my right wrist but other than that and the winding I felt ok ish, quite fortunate really asthe last time I crashed at that corner back in 2000 on the SP 1 I broke my back!!!!!

That night I went to bed pretty early for me, I'm terrible if I do that, if I try to get to bed like half hour or so earlier than I have in the last few days I end up sat staring at the ceiling and that night was no exception, bloody half past two I finally fell asleep, gutted!!!!

Morning warm up went pretty good to be honest, It was important for me to get out there and get amongst it straight away, despite the rain in the air I went straight into the 1.15's which is good and managed a run of very low 1.16's despite a visor problem whereby i used a dry conditions visor with no Pinlock or Foggy mask which meant I eventually had to abort mission as I couldn't see a thing!!!!

Lining up at the very back of the grid was a bit weird, the conditions from warm up had got worse pretty much to the point where it was nowhere near wet enough for full wets but was to wet for slicks but as we sat on the grid the rain came a bit heavier so the organizers gave us an 8 minute wet practice instead of starting the race.

After the wet practice the weather continued to close in making the tyre choice relatively simple, I went with wets front and rear, a couple of people gambled on an intermediate rear and just before we got going it might have been the way but with more rain due any second we went safe!

Being on the last row of the grid there was a fair bit of spray as soon as we got going, I never got a bad start but I couldn't see a thing and being on the outside of turn 1 Ididn't want to risk running around the outside of some of the tail enders only for one of them to make a mistake, run wide and then take me out, it's always a difficult balance between making as much progress as possible with the least risk possible, once rolling though and through the first couple of turns I started picking people off, the biggest problem was vision though, on the way through the pack I got so much spray which somehow got up inside my helmet and pretty much made seeing where I was going absolutely impossible, I'm not even joking, if you see me shaking my head on TV in the race it was to try to get the moisture to blow one way or another but it didn't work at all, it was so frustrating because I was riding crap because I couldn't be sure where I was on track, my HM Plant Honda was easily good enough to win on with the wet setting we had but I couldn't see to use the bike to my advantage, I couldn't even see my pit board let alone the numbers on it and the first time I realized I was getting near to the end of the race was when I sawthe big yellow board with a black cross that denotes last lap, at that point I thought Christ I need to get my finger out and pass Rutter, I realized there and then I was out of time to challenge Michael Laverty but I thought 2nd was on the cards.

I got a real good run out of church on the last lap and got passed Rutter and tried to hold a tight line up into the chicane, the only trouble was with no one in front to use as a braking marker I had no idea when to brake and I actually braked a bit early and ran into the chicane far too slow, Rutter squeezed around me and I figured I'd square of the last corner and out drag him to the line, the trouble with him is though he's to bloody clever, he exited the last turn using the Ducati's traction control but kept going right squeezing me in towards the wall meaning I had to lean further and struggled to accelerate on the side of the tyre, I stoodmy bike up and got a bit of a wheelie and lost drive towards the line so Michael popped me and got 2nd, I was more than happy anyway though as coming from 33rd to 3rd was pretty cool and not only that I got the fastest lap of the race so I would start race 2 from Pole Position anyway!!!!

I told my guys after the race that my bike was plenty good enough to win and knew that would be possible if I could get out front, ride smoothly and use my own lines rather than trying to pass people here, there and everywhere using up too much of my rear tyre, I was pretty pumped if not a little nervous for race 2, the real good thing though was that the rain had continued and the track was definitely fully wet!!!!

As the lights went out I got a pretty good start, 2nd into turn one behind Rutter, I made my move as soon as we got out the back section of the track and then pulled the pin, I put in a few really clean laps and immediately built up a bit of a lead, once I saw that I pushed a bit harder for a few laps to get a good gap which for a few laps was around 4 seconds, I was riding totally within myself and felt real good, my bike was once again perfect, I was riding thinking blimey how can this gap keep getting bigger when I'm not pushing, I came around on about lap 6 and saw the gap had gone up to 7 seconds and at that point I thought right let's just maintain this pace, not push at all, enjoy the race and see what happens, as it was the gap just kept going up and up and up so I just rode it home, by the end I think I won the race by just under 11 seconds which felt absolutely fantastic!!!!!,

I knew that if I needed to I could of probably lapped at least half a second if not more faster without laying it on the line so I felt on top of the world, a third and a win after a big crash Saturday afternoon and starting from last place on the grid in the first race was mega!!!

After all that's happened this weekend something to me which is almost as important as the results was how much as a team my side of the garage learnt about my bike, we tried a few new things setting wise and got some really useful information which I'm hoping we can take forward for the rest of the season, I'd like to say a massive thank you to my HM Plant team and also to all the fans who've once again been fantastic, just a quick one to end on now and it's a MASSIVE get well and get back soon to Stuart "Ratboy" Easton.

Talk to you all again soon, take it easy, Shakey #67

Croft, lows and highs!!!!

2011-05-23T14:41:00.006+02:00

I’m sure in my last blog to you guys I explained that after the difficulties we faced at Oulton Park during round 2 that my team booked us a testat Darley Moor, it’s a track I’d never been to before but the team assured me that it was absolutely perfect for the electronics work we needed to do.

I’ve also told you that Kiyo and I have an uncannily similar set up which has helped us work through things quicker throughout winter testing, well this test was no different, as it stands we’re both looking for exactly the same thing fromour bikes and with two different things needing to be tested rather than both having a stab at both Kiyo did some work on engine braking whilst I did throttle connection/power delivery, throughout the day we both made various changes to find a good setting and then I endedup using Kiyo’s engine braking setting and he used my throttle, 2 good steps forward and two things that we hoped and crossed our fingers would transfer across well set up wise for the upcoming 3^rd round of the championship at Croft.

I have to admit that I wasn’t especially looking forward to Croft, I’ve never really had that much luck there what with crashes and bikes getting stolen etc and I’ve never really gone that well there full stop, I was running 3^rd there in 2008 which was all I needed to do to take the title and then Tom Sykes rammed into me at the final hairpin which cost me the championship that day, that said, although the HM Plant team struggled there a littlelast year my engineer explained the reasons why and generally their results there have been strong, not only that it’s HM Plant’s local race, not HM Plant as in the team’s base I mean as in the race closest to the sponsor themselves, pressure’s on then ha ha ha!!!

Croft is a funny old place set up wise,you can make your bike real good in the slower sections but struggle big time in the fast part, you can makeit mega in the fast part but then have it horrendous over the bumps of which there’s a fair few at Croft,basically it takes a hell of a lot of compromise to find an ideal setting.

We worked really hard from the word go at Croft, in the first session on the tires from the race weekend before so that we could identify any problems faster rather than masking them with new tires that gave good grip.

One thing we did spend some time working on was riding with some of the electronics turned off to get a more direct feeling with what the bike was doing so that we could work on the chassis setting in order to try to fix problems rather than use electronics to mask stuff and that helped a fair bit in the beginning although one of the biggest problems throughout the first day was the wind which was pretty full on!!!

We ended up working through a rake of stuff and knew exactly where we were in terms of race tires but setting wise whilst the bike was good for the races we needed some mechanical grip, that was the one thing we were suffering with a bit, however we got through the first round of qualifying on our race spec tires anyway so we knew we could improve a fair chunk for the final two to get ourselves up near the front. Superpole 2 passed without any drama so we were through to the final session, the only drama was that at that point a fairly heavy shower of rain came which made he track wet, no normally this wouldn’t be a problem at all but as it stands no one other than maybe Kiyo and Rutter had actually ridden their bikes in the wet yet here we were with no wet practice whatsoever expected to go out and qualify in the most important session!!!

There were some talks in the pit lane with a few riders and team bosses along with the organizers about what to do but the decision to carry on was taken whenthe shower seemed to pass, I know some of the riders including me weren’t happy to go into that final session having never ridden our bikes in the wet with no wet practice but fortunately the track dried real quick and was pretty much full dry for the final session.

I got out on track with Dan Linfoot about 4 or 5 seconds up the track in front of me and he was chasing Michael Laverty so whilst they were a bit far to use as a target I could at least see what was going on up the track, I used this as best I could and put in my fastest lap of the weekend to go P1 so my 2^nd Pole position of the year which I was pretty happy about, I gave Dan a quick thank you hand shake for being my marker after!! ;-)

Morning warm up passed and showed us that the final changes we’d made to the bike the day before and a couple of small things Chris had worked on overnight had worked so all we’d have to do now was wait to see what would happen weather wise.

Working better after our overnight changes!!

After warm up the rain came so we got a 8 minute session to try our bikes in the wet but to be honest it wasn’t really wet enough to get a good feeling, we ended up 3^rd in that session anyway so it wasn’t really a drama, now the weather job would determine everything, hopefully it’d be either one or the other, wet or dry…

A word in my ear from race director Stuart Higgs

Typically for the race the drizzle came, it’s the worst situation in the world as a rider, sat on a bike on a track that’s neither wet nor dry not knowing weather to run wets and bank on rain or dry tires and hope the weather doesn’t get any worse but I made me choice, slicks!!!! We set of on the warm up laps and as we pulled up to the line the organizers delayed the start because of imminent rain incoming, I decided to still stick with slicks and quite a few of the guys changed to wets, I knew I needed to get going as quickly as possible whilst the rain was at bay and pulled the pin immediately, I got the hole shot and pulled away from the pack as quick as possible, I busted out a few fast laps then tried to settle in to a good rhythm,I could see and almost smell the weather coming in but I had around a 4 second lead so I just tried to be strong in the drier parts and be careful in the wetter bits, then as Iexited onto the start finish straight I had a problem with my bike and that was me, my race done, it was really unlucky because in all the riding I’ve done on my HM Plant Honda the thing has never missed a beat so to have my first mechanical whilst leading a race was a bit of a bummer but it’s been a weapon all season and all through testing so I mustn’t grumble, my boys do a good job of makingit one of the fastest bikes on the grid and if they could time when it might break it would never happen full stop they’re that on top of things.

My boys worked flat out in between the 2 races to get the engine changed in the bike ready for the 2^nd race and on the sighting lap everything felt good so now it was fingers crossed, the conditions were at least dry and the only slight bummer was that because of my lap time in the 1^st race I dropped from Pole to P4 for the second race.

I didn’t get the best of starts to be honest, I just missed the jump ever so slightly, it’s the most frustrating thing in the world too because as soon as it happens you know you’re going to end up in the middle of all sorts of nonsense through thefirst few turns, luckily for me it all panned out ok, P3 through the first couple of turns then P2 exiting the chicane after a pass on Hopper, Gary Mason was P1 and I sat watching him through the first lap, on the run down to turn 1 I passed Gary then pretty much straight away the course car came out due to the incident between John Kirkham and Michael Laverty, as the lights went out on the car I knew that all the guys behind would expect me to go immediately on the exit of the hairpin so rather than nailing the exit I rode steady on the exit and then pinned it hoping to catch the others napping and it seemed to work, I pretty quickly built up a good lead from there with a few fast laps and from then on in I just watched my pit board, whenever it dropped below 4 seconds I’d push for a lap or two then check my board to me sure I’d done enough to keep the gap where I wanted it.

Controlling or trying to at least ;-)

Exiting the last turn I switched all the electronics off as I wanted to celebrate my win with a wheelie and if you recall I tried to celebrate the same at Brands Hatch and the electronics cut the wheelie, this time it was perfect, a stand up wheelie the length of the straight!!!!!

Celebrating on top of the podium!!!

I’d like to say a massive thanks to my HM Plant team for all their hard work, a big thank you to all the fans there and finally I’d like to breath a sigh of relief after finally getting a podium at the Croft circuit, it’s been a while coming there and there’s no better place than the top step!!!

So that’s the race that I was least looking forward to out of the way now and I think we were rewarded well for all our hard work, Thruxton is next on the calendar, a track I love, my HM Plant Honda is fast and with the continued hard work of the team I hope we can step up on that top step maybe two times there!!!

Thank you all very much for your support and we’ll catch up again real soon, take it easy, Shakey #67

Oulton park, round 2!!!

2011-05-17T22:44:00.004+02:00

After the weekend we had at Brands Hatch I honestly wanted to drive straight up to Oulton park that evening to continue riding, in a way Brands actually felt like the 1^st time I’d actually properly ridden my HM Plant Honda, sure I’ve done hundreds of kilometres testing it but racing’s just some thing else and I enjoyed it a lot!!!!

When we got to Oulton I went out on the pushbike for a good few laps and then myself, Jason (my team mate) and a few of his buddies headed out for a bit of a pedal around the local area, we soon decided to ride to Chester and found a nice little coffee shop for a quick break before heading back to the track and boxing off the ride with a few more laps of the track, I tell you something that place doesn’t seem half as hillyon a bike with an engine ha ha ha!!!

Little did me and my team realise the following day just how muchof a shock we were going to be in for the minute we set out on track on the race bike, I love Oulton park anyway and watching Kiyo wrap up his championship there last year was one of the things that convinced me the HM Plant team was the one for me this year, however, aftera couple of laps to settle in I immediately started to push but saw my position in the session gradually going further and further down, in the interests of not dragging on forever with each session etc I’ll tell you straight, we had issues, BIIIGGGGG issues, we couldn’t stop because of our engine breaking strategy playing up, we couldn’t go due to problems electrical and basically just couldn’t be consistent full stop with it.

A little bit off line!!!

Both Kiyo and I worked on various ideas to try to help us but we were in such a pickle even after hours and hours of studying data etc that come qualifying there really wasn’t any point whatsoever in using a soft tyre, in a way you could say that qualifying 7^thon a race tyre wasn’t bad but let me tell you that was by riding what I had with my eyes shut for one lap and was never going to go race distance, not in a million years!!

Using all the track and trying hard!!

For morning warm up my crew chief Chris had come up with some ideas which made the bike a fair bit easier to ride, basically itfelt likeevery aspect of the bike was fighting the next aspect so it was a constant conflict but Chris sussed the job out and we went a bit better in that session so whilst I was far from thinking we’ll nail these races no problem but I did feel a bit more at ease.

In deep discussion with my crew chief Chris and Ohlins man Richard..

A bit more on it!!

As the lights went out for race 1 I was praying for a Brands hatch start but didn’t quite get it, it wasn’t terrible but it wasn’t great either, I realised fairly early on that I was in a bit of a pickle because I was really struggling to get the bike stopped and because of it overtaking was a night mare, being overtaken on the brakes was an even bigger one!! Towards the end of the race though when the bike had burnt off some fuel and got a bit lighter I started to be able to make some passes, I had a bit of a coming together with Michael Rutterwhich wasn’t really necessary and nearly took us both down, I’d managed to pass Michael on the brakes on the way down towards Hizzy’s but he let the brakes and leaned on me, I had nowhere to go other than over the kerbs on the inside and ran off the track narrowly avoiding taking us both down, that cost me a load of time and ultimately probably a podium, I hauled my way back up to 4^th and ended off less than a second off the podium, I was gutted not to make it to the podium but at the same time highly relieved that I’d got a 4^th, at one stage before qualifying I was just about managing to stay in the top 15!!!!!!

Race two went slightly better, we made some small changes to the bike so that I could attack from the beginning and the changes seemed to work, I did get passed a few times after making a few small mistakes but it was because I spent both races riding on and sometimes too far over the limit, luckily though race two panned out slightly better when I managed to nip past Kiyo on the final lap to claim 3^rd place, all things considered though I guess after the way the weekend had gone I should have been doing somersaults withthose results not being unhappy, one thing’s for sure though I definitely gave it 100%!!!!

A little bit happier!!!

We had a big team debrief after the races and the team immediately booked us a test at Darley Moor to try to get to grips with the electronics, it was 100% necessary so I couldn’t wait to get back on the bike away from a race meeting to do some work!!

Massive thanks to Chris, my boys and the whole HM Plant Honda team, it was a very, very difficult weekend at times but we all stuck together, worked very hard and came away with two not terrible results, fingers crossed things will get back to normal next time out and we can get back to winning!!!

Thanks everyone for all your support, talk to you all soon, Shakey #67

Ding ding, rrroooouuunnnnddddd 1, so far so good!!

2011-05-09T09:39:00.005+02:00

Hey guys and girls, i know this isn't exactly what you might call a regular update but i'm doing far better than the gap between the last two!!!! So here we are right now and like the title for this blog says so far so good, well, ish anyway!!!

I think the last blog ended somewhere around the end of the Cartagena tests in Spain where we had some BIG engine brake problems and a pretty aggressive throttle connection going on, well, after we got back to the UK the team worked real hard to rectify the problems and pretty soon after we had a test up at Cadwell park, it was pretty amusing because everybody talks about how narrow Cadwell is but the night before Jason and i went on a bit of a training ride on the push bikes and i was saying to him "do you know what, this place doesn't seem half as narrow as i remember..." i soon changed my opinion the next morning however, the HM Plant Fireblade ate the straight up so fast that i arrived at Park corner and thought shit where's the rest of the track ;-)!!!

The Cadwell test went really well, we spent the whole time working on the new (old) engine braking system and more time working on general electronic stuff and also ran through a few different chassis settings which was pretty interesting, all in all it was a real good test and enabled us to breath a hugh sigh of relief going forward!!

A few days after the test however it all went wrong again, at the WSB round inPhillip Island the F.I.M decided on a rule change which meant we could no longer use the engine braking system that the team used in 2010 and at Cadwell so we'd have to revert back to something along the lines of what we used in Spain...This wasn't good news!!

A couple of weeks later was the BSB test at the new Snetterton 300 circuit and when i say we started from scratch i mean we started from scratch with a completely new electronics package but due to the time constraints the team only had enough stuff for one bike which ended up being mine so i had a whole rake of stuff to try to work through whilst trying to learn the new layout too, it made for a busy day but we made good progress, Kiyo rode my bike for a session in the afternoon and continued working in exactly the same direction i'd been going so when i got to ride my bike for the final session it was almost like 2 steps better, the step i'd asked for after my last ride plusthe step further in the correct direction that Kiyo had gone so good news!!!!

After Snetterton that was it in terms of testing before the race season finally got underway and we rocked up at Brands feeling in pretty good shape, sure there was going to be work to do because there always is but we at least had a good base plus we had the added benefit of a four day meeting so an extra couple of test sessions in effect..

Practice passed and went ok, as did qualifying, in fact you could probably say qualifying went pretty damn good, i got Pole for race 1 with the fastest ever 2 wheeled lap around the place!!!

I'd been pretty concerned about the starts of the races as i've practised a few times and my times haven't really been that good but i shouldn't have worried as when the lights went out for the 1st race i pulled off the big holeshot, i can't remember the last time i did that!! I lead the race for a few laps but tried to do so at a pretty steady pace, we'd done enough laps in practice to know that we'd be strong at the end of the races so i was feeling pretty confident, a few laps in Michael Laverty passed me but when i saw i could very comfortably run his pace behind i thought perfect i'll just sit here and wait for a good chunk of the 30 laps to pass then make my move, then following him out of Clearways i saw his bike lose grip and start to come around on him, it was almost like watching in slow motion, it went sideways compressed the rear shock and then fired him straight out of the front, i managed to avoid him but lost a bit of time doing so, i saw out of the corner of my eye Tommy Hill run off the track and clip Michael and hoped they'd both be ok and then as i got going Ratboy (Stuart Easton) came pass and literally just after the course car came out, i was checking behind during the course car to see who was where and knew i'd have to pull the pin immediately as soon as the car went in, that's exactly what i did,

i passed Ratboy and got my head down, i managed to pull a 3 second gap and from there on in i managed to just cruise home to take the 1st win of the year, happy days!!!

Race 2 was a similar affair, i got another fantastic start, got the holeshot, lead for a bout 10 laps or so,

Tommy Hill passed so i sat behind with exactly the same plan as race one sussing out where we were strong and then with about 3 laps to go i got a pretty good drive off Clearways and an opportunity to pass came up running into Paddock, i dived to the inside thinking yessss, perfect, but as i ran in i thought noooo not perfect, not perfect at all, i ran in a little hot on the front and drifted wide, as soon as i got back on track Kiyo came past and i lost a bit of momentum due to my mistake, i got back on the back of the guys but had to settle for third, hardly a disaster i know but not as good as two wins ;-)!!!!!

We had a big long debrief straight after the races and talked through some bits and pieces and I left Brands in a real good mood and well excited about getting out at Oulton park, I couldn’t wait!!! One last thing I’ll quickly mention is an apology from me to all of the fans that queued up to see me at Pitlane walkabout, I had to be taken away real early to do a quick PR job for the team then rush down to get ready for race 1 so if you were one of the people queuing like I said I apologise!! Thank you all so much for all the cheers and support throughout the weekend, long may it continue!!! More to come very soon… Take it easy, Shakey #67

Horrendously overdue blog inc HM Plant debut....

2011-03-10T18:36:00.004+01:00

Hey guys and girls, i'm so sorry that i haven't added a Blog in ages, to be honest with you it's been that long that i forgot my username and password etc and had to have it all resent in order to add this blog!!!

Not that i'm trying to make excuses but Twitter has made my life so much easier in terms of updating you all with little bits and pieces that i'm up to and i hope you enjoy reading my Tweets on the home page of shakey.com!!

I'm not even going to bother trying to do a full update with everything that's gone on since last November when i last posted as A i've probably forgotten half the stuff already and B i'd probably be sat here for about three weeks typing which i don't really fancy!!!

I guess then the place to start is the beginning, ie the beginning of my 2011 season, as you will definitely already know i signed this year for the current British Superbike Champions HM Plant Honda to ride a 2011 spec Fireblade, to be honest with you the whole thing really excites me for a number of reasons, 1 because obviously the team is the top team in BSB, 2, i loved my old privateer Stobart Honda back in 2007so the chance to ride the Official bike is mega, 3, there's so many people out there that think i can onlypossibly ride a Ducati and this is a great chance for me to prove them wrong, there will be no team pecking order with Kiyo and i getting identical bikes, to be honest the list of reasons goes on and on but the bottom line is that my 1st run out on the bike was last week, we had a 3 day open track test at Calafat, a day off then 2 days at Cartagena although the latter was to be run in sessions.

Starting with Calafat then and 1st impressions, SSSSSSSSSS********************TTTTTTTTT the bike felt fast, to be fair 5 months off or whatever it was since Magny Cours and the only thing with two wheels i'd ridden was a bicycle so the bike was going to feel quick but the fact that when we got on track there were really strong crosswinds blowing us practically off the start finish straight didn't help at all, obviously being a 4 cylinder the Honda makes it's power in a totally different way to what i've been used to for the last three years, the power feels real strong and gets stronger the higher the rpm soi'd exit each of the hairpins get on the gas the power would get stronger and stronger, lift the front wheel and quite literally the front would get practically blown from underneath me by the wind, i came in after my first 6 or 7 lap exit absolutely knackered, i've never had to fight so hard just to try to keep a bike pointing in the right direction, it wasn't anything to do with fitness i was just so so tense trying to keep the thing upright, it made the guys chuckle when i came backand commented on it anyway!!! :-)

My crew chief Chris taking notes, as soon as i do this it wheelies!!!! ;-)

The first couple of exits were spent riding the bike with no electronic aids whatsoever so the thing was pretty raw and aggressive but a combination of me figuring out how to hustle the thing round better and starting to use a clutch again on corner entry got things going better before we started to turn on the electronics.

Once on we actually had a lot of work to do with the electronics, the team have changed a couple of bits and pieces over the winter which meant everything needed resetting and calibrating, this would end up being something that we simply couldn't get to the bottom of whilst over in Spain, the guys realised fairly earlyon that we had some electrical dramas and a few calls back to the UK couldn't really do a great deal to fix our problems, being an open pitlane format we had plenty of time to come in and out and make changes at our leisure however i was keen to not try to change the bike too much if at all as last year it was obvious the team knew how to get one of these bikes going round the track well so me trying to turn it into what i've been used to wasn't the way forward. It became apparent from both myself and Kiyo early on that we were having big problems corner entry wise and also with the throttle connection, the difficult thing for me was not knowing how good or bad the bike was when it was working so i just kept my head down and rode as well as i could around the problems we were having, that said, the fact i felt stuck at about 80% effort because anymore caused bigproblems, after just one day i went something likea second and a bit quicker than i'd been after 3 days there in 2008 so things weren't all bad!!!

Early on in my 1st days riding!!!

On the 2nd day we made a few changes to the bike chassis wise, we found some good information and made some progress from apex to corner exit but it had a detrimental effect on corner entry which due to the dramas we were already having in that department meant we ended up reverting back. I knocked at least another half a second or so off of the day before's lap time and was really looking forward to getting out on the third and final day to see how much quicker we could go, i felt confident that despite our problems i'd end up at least 2 seconds a lap quicker than '08 but crap weather 1st thing which eventually turned to rain meant we had to abandon the 3rd day which was a real shame, nevertheless i couldn't wait to get back on the bike at Cartagena, we knew we couldn't fix our problems but it would give me a good chance to see how the bike worked from one track to another!!

I think this is a pretty cool shot, nearly got my knee down too!!! ;-)

The good thing about the Cartagena test was that a few of the teams had been there 2 days before we got on track so it should give us a good indication lap times wise where we'd need to be, there was as always plenty of talk about who'd done what after how many laps etc but we were up to speed pretty much immediately, after 9 or 10 laps i'd already matched the teams best lap from the year before, then to make things even better despite the kind of 80% effort problem we were still experiencing i went from the 1.35.1 the team managed in 2010 to a 1.33.5 on a new pair of race tyres.

One of my first exits at Cartagena, didn't take long to get up to speed there!!!

For the second day we stuck with the tyres from the day before for the first 2 or 3 sessions and tried pretty much in vein to help our electrical problems, i tested a couple of different front fork settings too but once again everything we were trying to do and achieve was basically a different way of fixing the basic problem which we couldn't really do anything with which was pretty frustrating, we never even bothered running the soft rear tyre that all the other boys used at the end of the final day as i didn't see the point unless i could give 100%, however, at the same time whilst it was frustrating it kind of bodes pretty well for the upcoming season, the team are as good as 99% certain they can fix the electrics once they get the bikes back to Louth and we have a couple of UK test's lined up before the season starts so all should be good!!!

We're back home now for a few days before heading up to the UK, it will give me some time to get some training in and sort out a few bits and pieces, we've also got a scan and some blood tests to get done before we leave to see how baby number 2's doing, i'm well excited about another child, i see it as a win win situation for me, i've got my little boy which i always dreamed of, now, if i have a girl fantastic but if we have another boy then it's all good too, double the amount of toys that dad will HAVE to assist playing with :-)!!!!!!

Right, i think that's about enough for now, i've been typing this for god knows how long already!!, Thanks for reading and i promise to update thisa bit more often from here on in, take it easy everyone, Shakey #67

4th gear here on the HM plant Honda Fireblade!!

It's all been going on!!!

2010-11-24T18:12:00.003+01:00

Hey guys and girls, sorry for another big delay in sending you a blog but in fairness i've had a fair bit on my plate just lately!! I don't really know where to start to be honest, in my last blog it was that time of year where everybody's talking and things are starting to happen regarding the following season but for me things were ticking along fairly steady, i think i mentioned last time my win win situation as i saw it, basically i may have got to stay in WSB with a good team which would've been real cool but if it didn't happen i had some mega options in BSB which would give me a really strong chance at fighting for another title or two back in the UK, well, as it turned out the good option i wanted in WSB went and the best option in BSB became a goer so that was that job done, HM Plant Honda it is for 2011 then!!

As i said win win situation, it actually feels kind of strange in a way because in recent years in BSB it was always going to be either HM Plant Honda or Airwaves Ducati as they were that were going to compete for the title, the two teams were both seemingly at another level and with Airwaves Ducati not being around anymore HM Plant was the logical choice, sure there's some real good teams out there now that may have stepped right up and bridged the gap but i'm more than happy with my choice and can't wait to get going, it's almost like the perfect wedding present.......

Speaking of which, last Thursday Petra and i finally tied the knot and got married, we had a mega day and an even better party that night, everything went absolutely perfect and i'm both extremely happy and proud to be able to call her finally my wife, i'll try to get some pics up on the site in the near future to show you all, she really did look like a princess and as for our son, well, he may only be two years old but he lit up the dance floor, he had everyone in stitches, i'm almost convinced somebody slipped a little bit of red bull or something into him, i've never seen anything like it :-)!!!!

We're kicking back in the Uk for a little bit longer, i had to go to a big Honda dealer conference the other day and have to go to the NEC show this sunday which will be cool, monday i think i'm collecting my new motocross bike from the team and that's the first chance i'll get to take a look at my new Fireblade for next year, i'm so excited i might take a pair of leathers and a helmet to see if they'll let me ride it around the car park for a bit ha ha ha, then at some point that week i'd like to actually go home for a bit, i can't wait to ride my new CRF250, i really enjoyed my last one a couple of years ago, i'll take it home for a bit then early next year bring it back to the UK so that i can leave it with my mates then i can come over to go riding with them and get them to prepare it ready for the next time we're going out, i'm not that good with all the cleaning and prep work, i just love riding the things!!!

Right for now i'm going to crack on, off out for dinner tonight with one of my cousins and her husband which will be highly amusing so i need to get moving, talk to you all soon, Shakey#67

Finally, a HM Plant Honda rider, team gear that fits on route ;-)

Chilling!!

2010-10-16T11:01:00.002+02:00

Hey guys and girls, how are you all?, not a great deal to report to be honest, as you will of probably seen if you follow me on Twitter we're back home now for a few weeks, i've managed to catch a bit of a bug and now have a real sore throat as well as feeling pretty lethargic which is a bit of a bummer, hopefully it'll pass real quick!!

No news yet on 2011 but rest assured everything's under control so i'm going to spend this weekend chilling and hope to have some news by the middle or the end of next week, i'm in a really good mood regarding next season and feel really upbeat about the whole thing, the reason being the way i see it i'm in a win win situation right now, i still have a possibility or two to remain in World Superbikes which has to be top priority but i'm also talking with all the top teams in British Superbike too so if the WSB doesn't happen then i'm really excited about returning to BSB to try to fight for a title or two, in the ideal world it'd be two as both MacKenzie and now Kiyo have won three to my two so there's all the motivation i need to try to win a couple of titles, as i said earlier hopefully we'll have some more news next week so keep your eyes peeled!! Take it easy, Shakey#67

Updated Magny Cours....

2010-10-06T19:32:00.002+02:00

So then, here it is, the final “Race” diary of the 2010 season, unfortunately it’s going to follow a somewhat familiar pattern to all previous one’s this year which is a tiny bit frustrating but here goes anyway!!!

The following day after Imola we dropped Petra at the airport before Reggie and I went on a bit of a road trip up to Zurich, we saw the funniest car you’ve ever seen on the way up through Switzerland, in fact if you follow me on Twitter at @67shakey you would’ve been able to see the picture I posted, the funniest thing was after about an hour had passed since we saw it we pulled into some services and the car was in there, lets just say we better hope there’s not a World War 3 if that car is all the artillery we have in England ;-)!!!

After spending Monday night and pretty much all day Tuesday in Zurich we got back in the motorhome to make a steady start on the trip towards Magny Cours, that ended up turning into an all night affair though as Reg ended up driving all the way to the circuit, the last two hours or so were a little bit of a worry, we used Tom Tom to guide us there and obviously it fails to recognise the fact we’re in a 40ft long motorhome, we followed the directions and the roads and villages etc got smaller and smaller and narrower and narrower, I said to Reg after about an hour at it all we need now is a low bridge, can you imagine that, I would have been fuming ha ha!!!

As ever around this time of the year the paddock was rife with all sorts of gossip about who was going where and typically by the time you’d got from one end of the paddock to the other the story had changed completely which always amuses me!!

Riding wise I’d be lying if I said I dislike the circuit because I don’t it’s just something about the place that I can’t get on with, last year I struggled a bit there but this year I was determined to get on with it and try to work it out, let’s face it, it was the last two races of the year so now was as good a time as ever for a good result!!!

Despite having a much better feeling with the bike than 12 months ago I finished the session a little bit down the order, we were still in the top 5 or 6 but a little bit off and the bike never felt too bad at all, sure there were things we could improve but it wasn’t like we were miles out of the ball park, this theme continued right through all the practice and qualifying sessions but if you saw the results and lap times it was absolutely unbelievable, in one session there was 0.7 of a second covering the top 16 riders, that is just out of this world, no other championship in the world is ever that tight, it’s so cool to be a part of, it’d be even better if I was at the top of the tables though ha ha!!

In Superpole I got straight through the first session using just race tyres which usually bodes well, in the second one initially I went 7^th but by the time I’d got back I’d dropped out of the cut, I decided to use my 2^nd qualifier immediately but unfortunately I entered an empty track and had no option but to do a lap alone with no one to chase, I did a faster lap but ended up missing the cut off by about 2 10^th’s and finished up in 14^th, as I said earlier in this diary, following patterns……

Knowing that I was lining up on the grid for what was to be my final races with Althea I was determined to do a good job, as the lights went out I got quite a good start and made up 5 or 6 places through the first couple of turns, everything was going to plan until sector 3, basically in morning warm up for the Superstock class someone blew an engine in a big way and dropped oil all the way into the fast chicane, it was possible to go inside it or around it but definitely not where I had to go on the first lap, across the top of it, I ran on straight through the chicane but had to really anchor up hard to make it back onto the track through the designated entry road back onto the track so I dropped to last place, F’in great that’s all I need, I managed to get back on track and picked up as many places as I could before the end, I got stuck behind Tom Sykes which was real frustrating as he was like a bit of a road block, parking his Kawasaki in the middle of the track at every corner before firing it out down the straights, I passed him a few times but every time I did he simply out drove me on the exit so I ended up a pretty disappointed 9^th right behind him.

For the second race I was determined to get a better start and to try to get straight in front of Tom, I actually pulled it off too but lost a place to him when I lined up I think Lanzi on the brakes into the hairpin, Tom got in front and it took me a good while to get back passed but this time I finally managed, I then set about chasing down Carlos who was a couple of seconds up the track, I managed to catch him and get passed but ran out of time to do anything else so that was it, 8^th place in my final race of the year, far from a stunning weekend.

Now though a couple of days have past, I’m actually feeling pretty chilled at the minute, I’m kinda down that some of the guys are already starting their preparations for 2011 in Magny Cours but I’m actually quite relieved that this season’s over, it’ll sound corny I know but I’m already ready for 2011, I have no idea yet what it’s going to bring but I’m ready regardless, it’s weird because right now I feel free and like a big weight’s off my shoulders I guess you could almost say I’m having a week completely off and away from it all!!!! There’s been plenty of stuff to try to get sorted both racing and non racing wise though so I’ve been pretty busy anyway, as far as the racing thing goes right now I have some possibilities in WSB, options in BSB so I’m off up to Oulton Park Saturday to pursue them and a couple of possibilities elsewhere too which we’re working on so I’ve no doubt something will come together quite soon, you can rest assured I’ll let you guys know exactly what’s happening so all that leaves me to say is a big thank you to all of you who’ve followed me this year, in the words of Vinny Jones or should I say Bullet tooth Tony…It’s been emotional!!!!!!

Big thanks also to my guys in my side of the garage this year, Alberto, Fabrizio, Pino and Luca, you’ve been mega thank you, thanks also to Genesio, to Shoei, Alpinestars, Express insurance, William and the boys at Stobart and finally S.I.S Science in Sport, lets hope we have far more to cheer about next year. Take it easy guys and girls, Shakey #67

Day 1 Magny Cours

2010-10-01T18:10:00.003+02:00

Hey guys and girls, just a real quick one, not especially good news to be fair, just finished provisional qualifying and ended up down in P13, sounds like a drama i know but on the upside my last two laps today were the only ones i enjoyed as i struggled to get a good feeling and i made big mistakes on both of those laps anyway, not only that i may well be P13 but i'm only 0.5 second off of pole so it's not all bad, work to do tomorrow but we'll be pushing!! Take it easy, Shakey#67

Faster, faster, faster!!!!

Imola!!

2010-10-01T18:06:00.001+02:00

Blimey, just woke up here in Magny Cours, it’s Friday morning which means practice is going to start later and I haven’t even told you about Imola yet, I know what I’m like, if I leave it even a day longer I’ll get myself all in a pickle and start forgetting what happened where so here goes for Imola!!

I like the Imola circuit, I enjoy the layout and looked forward to the race there which by all accounts was a little bit touch and go at some points, the test mid season had gone well there right up until the point when Leon’s bike took a particular fancy to mine so it was all systems go, we started the weekend with one bike set exactly the same as we had the bike in Nurburgring as we’d made a bit of a step there setting wise and the other bike was set exactly how we had it at the test earlier in the year.

The 1^st session went really, really well, I immediately felt comfortable especially on the bike with the test settings in and ran P2 to Carlos right until the last 15 minutes or so, we put our second set of tyres on and went P1 by a good few tenths, I thought that was enough and indeed it was until Carlos did a final flying lap and pipped me by a 10^th again so a good start to the weekend.

We had some more work to do in provisional qualifying, I wanted to try to take the strong points from both bikes and create one real good one, we were once again running right at the front when with about 15-20 minutes to go the boys gave me the BOX sign, we knew where we were and all was ok so I said right lets just give it 5 minutes before we head out, I was confident I could go quite a bit faster but I didn’t want to do it too early and get pipped like I did in the first session, we used that final blast to try a different front tyre which generally works real well but for some reason I pushed real hard and only managed to match my time from earlier in the session, in fairness I didn’t put together the best lap and did get a tiny bit held up but I guess if nothing else it told me that that type of front tyre wasn’t the way forward, I dropped to 5^th I think by the end of the session but I was ok and still felt confident that with the decent front tyre I could’ve improved both time and position wise.

Saturday brought mixed conditions, pretty much everybody sat out the whole morning session, I did literally 1 flying lap on a set of intermediates just to scrub them in case of needing a set for Superpole!!

I’ll go on record saying that Imola has to be THE slipperiest surface I have ever ridden in the wet, for Superpole I went out on a bike set for the wet but it felt like a stiff dry bike, I had no feeling whatsoever, I was amazed that I finished 2^nd in the first session, I felt like I might as well get off and push the bike around, I’d probably of gone quicker!!

For the second Superpole the guys softened the bike right off and on the out lap it felt a tiny bit better, by that I mean the suspension actually compressed!! I did the warm up lap then exited the chicane and thought right Superpole 3 here we come, on the run up to turn 1 I noticed waving yellow flags, I entered the chicane and out the corner of my eye I noticed a bike on the exit, I entered the left, changed direction just took a minuscule glance at the stricken rider to make sure he wasn’t in my path and the next thing I knew I was flying through the air towards him, Cal had exactly the same crash, as in the end did many others but he’d got up and managed to ride to the pits, I ran to my bike which at that point was still running, I went to grab the clutch to pick it up but the marshall bench pressed the thing up right before I grabbed the clutch and it stalled the engine, I was fuming. I managed to get a lift bag on the back of a 250 year old Italian on his scooter and to be honest it would’ve been quicker to walk, I got out on the other bike which was set up for the dry and missed the cut for Superpole 3 by nothing, and I nearly had another massive near highside in the process, I wasn’t happy!!!

I really struggled for some reason in morning warm up, the track was still slightly damp particularly in the fast down hill run to the chicane so after a couple of warnings early on I decided that there were no prizes for being fastest in warm up!!!

My start for race 1 was far from ideal and I got a bit humped being on the inside running through the 1^st chicane, I pushed real hard all race but until the fuel load had gone down a bit I found myself really struggling to stop and turn the bike, I ran off track trying to pass Guintoli and lost 4 seconds to him but a good pace in the last half of the race saw me catch and pass him on the last lap or so. The result, 8^th, wasn’t particularly impressive but my pace at the end was real good so all we needed to do was compare the data from the beginning to the end to make some changes to ensure the bike worked the same in the first part of race 2 as it had at the end of race 1, easy a!!!!

I got a slightly better start in race 2 and managed to get through the first chicane a bit better, the race was pretty tight at the front, ok Carlos got the lead and cleared off but the rest of us were close, about half way through Haslam’s bike blew and I was completely blinded, the smoke was so think that I literally couldn’t see a thing, I kept thinking please please don’t let anybody fall in front of me, I might just as well of shut my eyes because I would’ve seen more!!! Fortunately despite running off track we continued on but it broke the group right up, I was left with Lanzi who finished 2^nd in the first race about 3 or 4 seconds up the road and I managed to catch and pass him to take 6^th at the flag.

Obviously reading this now you’ll know that I’m not going to be continuing with the Althea Ducati team, it’s a real shame, the team are going to focus on Carlos who let’s face it has done an awesome job this year and may consider running another rider should one with a big personal backer come along so I’m out, I have a few irons in the fire though and all is not lost, I’m not sure what I’m going to do next year but rest assured as soon as I know you’ll read it right here. Take it ease, Shakey#67

Nothing like using all the track ;-)!!!!

Nurburgring.....

2010-09-08T14:34:00.004+02:00

I'm not going to make this the usual full on race report i normally try to do after a race weekend, the reason, i'm frustrated, so, so frustrated with the way things are going right now, i know the saying is you make your own luck but bloody hell give me a break, if that saying's true then i need to find a new recipe for my luck because mine seems to be all bad!!!

I guess in someways the support and comments i get from you guys go some way to makingthings a bit easier to deal with i mean lets face it, i'm riding in a World Championship not a club meeting so to go from pretty much last and come through to 9th and 10th isn't terrible but you need to understand how badly i want to be racing at the sharp end, fighting for podiums etc, that's what's important to me not how many people i manage to pass on my way to a top 10 position, i wasn't out of the top 5 all weekend in Germany, in fact i lead sessions, ran top 3 and generally had a real good podium position pace the WHOLE weekend so to get the results i did all because of a crash that came out of nowhere, aaaarrrrrrrgggggggghhhhhhhhhhhh is the only word that springs to mind!!!!!

One thing that was good about the weekend was the fact that we further improved the bikes chassis feeling, in Silverstone we made good progress with the way we had the bike turning and in Germany we made another good step, i'm really hopeful that we'll be able to start with a real good bike in Imola plus we have the setting we got in the test there earlier in the year so it should be all good.

The final real good thing that happened was the lap we did of the Nordschliefe after the race, bloody hell, what an eye opener that was, it turned out quite amusing because with a Fiat Punto we smoked a GSXR 1000 rider , i used him as a bit of a guide in the first instance then through one real tricky part of the circuit we passed him, i'd love to go back there with an instructor and a quick car, the place is awesome!!!

We headed back to the UK monday to collect Zack then the following day we went off home, i'm looking forward to getting some more training in whilst we're here and desperately hoping for a far stronger end to the season, this definitely hasn't been a year to talk about with the grand kids has it, mind you, i haven't got them so it's all good!!! Take it easy and i'll catch up with ya soon, Shakey #67

Hard at it!!

Race two after passing Troy..

How cool is this pic!!!!

Just about to start a highly amusing lap of the Nordschliefe!!!

Nurburgring day 1...

2010-09-03T23:23:00.003+02:00

Hey guys and girls, just a really quick update, good start so far, started this morning and lead pretty much the whole session, we only used 1 set of tyres for the whole hour session as we wanted to fix the bike rather than fire new tyres at it, we dropped to 5th by the end of the session when everybody else used their second set but it was all good.

Provisional qualifying we went one step better, i was actually pretty disappointed as Carols and i had been P1 and P2 all session but right at the end with new tyres i never improved my lap time and a few did so i ended up provisional front row in P4, if i get a chance i'll update you guys again tomorrow, take it easy, Shakey#67

Not the most impressive pic i know but it's the only one i have right now!!!

Holidays are over!!!

2010-09-02T11:38:00.002+02:00

Well people, this is it, the summer break is now officially over, i'm sat here in the motorhome typing this on Thursday morning here at the Nurburgring, shortly i'm off over to see the guys in the garage to get the low down on what's been going on during the summer break and i might see if i can get taken around the famous circuit in one of the fast taxis, they have things like M5's that you can get driven around in so that should be amusing!!!, i can't wait to get back out on the bike tomorrow, last year i really liked the layout and flow of the track but the races weren't two of my best but hopefully this year we can rectify that a little!!

It's been a real good break and i've really enjoyed the time out and actually getting to spend a few weeks at home without having to jump on a plane or drive up to the UK, it's made a pleasant change i tell you!!! I managed to get a fair bit of cycling in over the break, had the in laws down, had mum down for a little while oh and pick up some kind of stomach infection that wrote me off for about 8 days which wasn't at all good but i think we're out the other side of that now, sat right now watching Reg making a dick of himself trying to learn some new motocross game i brought for the PS3 which is quite amusing!!

Right for now i'm gonna crack on for a bit, i'l update you guys again real soon ok, i know this update's been a while coming but don't worry, i'm on it!!! Talk to you soon, Shakey#67

Silverstone...

2010-08-04T11:05:00.003+02:00

I have to admit things had been pretty manic on the run up to Silverstone, we had to come to the UK a few days before the event as there’s a number of important things that we needed to try to make some headway with so we spent Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday rushing around boxing a load of stuff off.

Thursday morning however it was off to work we go, the weekend started with an interview at Whittlebury Hall just near Silverstone with fastbikes magazine, it seemed kind of weird in a way doing an interview for them, back in the day when Colin owned it and I was wheeling across the South of France an interview with them would’ve been the last thing I’d imagine doing, ironically the journo Simon Roots last interviewed me at the end of 2003 but for Superbike magazine, he explained the differences from a journalist point of view of the whole road testing thing and by all accounts it’s not the fun it used to be, in fact, far from it!!!!

After an hour or so of reminiscing the past we talked a bit about the present and possibly the future however I’ve no idea yet what the future holds so that part of the interview past fairly quick, a fairly rapid close to the interview and we were rushing off to the circuit for the press conference.

After all that kind of stuff was done I got on my scooter to get out and investigate the new layout, to be honest I was really pleasantly surprised with what I saw, on the tv the track looked really really fast which is potentially a big problem for us and whilst it wasn’t exactly slow it wasn’t quite as bad as I thought.

Free practice was always going to be about getting the gearing sorted out, fundamentally chassis wise we knew we’d be there or thereabouts as the bike always works to a degree it’s just a case of refining the chassis for each circuit, we tried a few different options gearing wise and never quite hit the nail on the head but that was only to be expected at a brand new track where lap times were tumbling by the session, by the end of the session we finished 5^th or 6^thwhich was a decent enough start, we knew we had plenty more to come it’s just that at that point nobody realized just how much more we’d need!!!

1^st qualifying also passed without any dramas, we found just over a second but managed to slip back to 13^th which I was pretty pissed about, once again though we had more to come for the following day and just being in the top 20 ensured a place in Superpole so it was all good.

Saturday’s morning qualifying was in pretty crap conditions, it had rained over night and there were a few damp patches and spots of rain about, I ended the session 5^th I think after leading nearly the whole session and I’d got to within a 10^th of a second of my lap time of the previous afternoon in good conditions so I knew we’d made some good progress.

Free practice in the afternoon passed again without drama and another chunk off my lap time, so it was onwards and upwards now to see if my prediction regarding whether or not I’d sussed Superpole was true or not…..

I managed to put in a good enough lap initially on a new pair of race tyres for P5 which took me through to Superpole 2 which pleased me.

In Superpole 2 I threw down a lap on my 1^st qualifier which initially put me P4 so I was well chuffed but I knew I’d need to use my second tyre as only 8 could go through, then, the revelation of all revelations happened, I knocked another .3 of a second off my best all alone on a qualifying tyre, as I crossed the line I saw myself P4 again, the chequered flag was out and I was so chuffed you wouldn’t believe, finally my shot at a front row and bang on time for my home race, I rode that in lap with the biggest grin on my face however my face changed when I was entering the pits and the grandstand position board showed me P9, I couldn’t believe it, I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry!!!!

Morning warm up went pretty good, we tried another setting change that worked really well and had the bike the most balanced it had been all weekend, that session came and went and it wasn’t too long at all after that my pre race nerves set in, my poor stomach was doing back flips, I did an interview on the grid for some radio station and the guys question was something like “so Shakey, home race, how are you feeling, what are your thoughts right now?” my reply was “to be honest with you, my only thought right this second is whether I sat on the toilet for long enough earlier, judging by the way my stomach feels right now I’m guessing not!!!” the guy didn’t look particularly impressed with my answer!!!!!

Anyway, enough of that, I got a pretty good start as the lights went out, they held us on the line for a long time but as I said my start was good and my run down to turn 1 was good, I got a pretty good run through turn 1 but got a little bit humped in the first few turns, my first lap through the stadium section was all it took to tell me it was pretty much all over before it’d even started, coming on the start finish the bike was sideways, something I’d not had a problem with all weekend, the rear tyre wasn’t working at all and I just kept losing valuable tenths at every corner exit, there was a point where I thought that’s enough, I’m pulling in but lets face it it’s not like I’ve got a million points behind me this year so I stuck at it to finish 9^th.

I got another good start in race two, in fact probably better than race 1, I settled in around 7^thbut this time despite not changing a thing other than the rear tyre.

I had a pretty good run to be fair and felt really comfortable in the group battling for 4^th place, it was absolutely imperative that I made a perfect exit onto the straight whilst in the group as it enabled me to get towed maybe a quarter of a lap down the straight which kept me in contention. With two laps to go I put a pass on Biaggi and was preying to keep my 6^th position, I thought come on, smooth, fast, no mistakes, it’s just two laps you can do it, I still believe I could however Max passed me down the back straight so f***in fast that I thought oh ok, maybe you can’t then!!! The long and the short of it was I rode the last lap trying as hard as I could to be on the back of the group, riding wide sweeping lines to take advantage of any mistakes but all of a sudden Sylvain came up the inside of me into the right before the hairpin, I immediately swept out wide to try to out drive him between the hairpin and the following left onto the last straight and so so nearly got him back but didn’t quite pull it off which meant I had to roll the throttle losing me any chance of attacking him so it was P8 for me then.

Obviously I’m pretty gutted with the weekend and the results, I’m real pleased for Cal Crutchlow, he rode mega and he’s a good kid but it doesn’t seem like 5 minutes ago that I was beating the likes of him, Leon, Leon etc week in week out so for them guys to be on the podium whilst I had to settle for 8^th and 9^th is a bit of a bitter pill to swallow but I guess it is what it is, we’ll keep on pushing as hard as we possibly can and see where it takes us.

Massive thanks this weekend to the British crowd, you guys all made me feel real special, it was mega to be appreciated that way and the words of encouragement made me feel mega and really cheered me up, big thanks also to my mechanics for all their hard work, they got my bike better and better as the weekend went on so good job guys!!! Take it easy everyone and I’ll update you again soon. Shakey #67

Full gas!!!!!

Brno...

2010-07-13T21:07:00.002+02:00

Feels kind of weird sitting here typing this sentence because I’m just about to say that I’m relatively happy with my weekend despite the fact I finished 12^th and 9^th or whatever it was!!! I guess though all things considered whilst I had every intention to give it a go on Friday morning I wasn’t even sure if I’d be able to ride, in fact if the truth be known if you had of asked me maybe Tuesday or Wednesday before the event I was pretty doubtful to be honest…

Prior to Brno we’d spent a few days over in the UK getting a few bits and pieces sorted out which for a change went fairly smoothly, generally we get like 5 minutes there and have 5 months worth of stuff to sort out so we never get everything done, this time though things were a bit less rushed which was nice!!!

Despite the fact it had been pretty warm whilst we were in the UK getting off the plane in Brno initially surprised me as it was only pleasantly warm at that point, it was soon to change to roasting however but it was lovely for 5 minutes!!!

Reggie had driven the motorhome up from the Ducati factory for me, this was his first race weekend this year so it was good to have him around again, plenty of people in the paddock had been asking where he was and my reply was always, “he’s gone A.W.O.L!!” anyone who knows him would understand my answer!!!!

I went to the medical centre as soon as we got to the circuit Wednesday evening but that was shut so I had to get up first thing Thursday morning to see the doctors in the clinica to see what we could do treatment wise to sort my hand out, fortunately Alpinestars brought along some larger left hand gloves for me which were stretched and adjusted to fit my still pretty swollen hand in, to be honest after my initial treatments things were feeling pretty awkward, the stitching on the top of the glove was pulling right across the top of the cut and every time I clinched my hand as if to hold onto the bars I felt inside the glove like my stitches were trying to pull themselves open, I thought there and then, hmm, this is gonna be a tough weekend!!!!

Unbelievably the first session went incredibly well, I felt really awkward and one step behind the bike but I still finished the first session in 6^th I think after running as high as 4^th at one point, the only problem was I could only really do 4 or 5 lap stints at that point as the swelling was making life a little bit tricky..

For the 1^st qualifying session I dropped a few places but to be honest I wasn’t bothered as running in the top 10 was more than good enough, my biggest problem was feeling still 1 step behind the bike, it was like the bike was riding me round the track rather than me riding it, we made a few adjustments to beat the feeling but to be honest nothing seemed to make any difference, in the end despite spending all the way from that session to race one changing bits and pieces I resigned myself to the fact that it was just me so I got on with it as best I could.

Saturday brought even hotter weather and with it even more problems feeling wise, I dropped further down the order and was seriously wondering whether or not I was doing the right thing riding like this in these positions, I wasn’t happy but then I guess racers never are but we cracked on anyway positively hoping that the next session would be the turnaround!!

Sessions seemed to be coming and going far faster than I could cope with and I really wasn’t making much progress so as you can probably imagine I wasn’t exactly looking forward to Superpole but ironically things initially turned themselves around a bit…

In Superpole 1 I got out behind Haga and despite the fact he crashed in front of me I managed my best race tyre time of the weekend around half a second or so quicker than my previous best of the weekend, it was good enough to get me through but we didn’t know it at the time so I used one of my qualifiers although I never got to follow anyone on that lap and only matched my time on the race tyre.

For Superpole 2 we fitted an new front and rear tyre and I went out to put 1 fast lap in before using my second qualifier to try to get through to Superpole 3, unfortunately though about 5 corners in it was obvious there was something not right front tyre wise, I lost the front into the 1^st of the double rights then again a few turns later, I rushed back to the pits to change tyres for my qualifier and a new front but there simply wasn’t time to change the front and with the qualifier rear in the bike just pushed the front even more. On a positive note though I think I finally sussed this whole qualifying thing, obviously I’m going to reserve judgement until Silverstone but I’m fairly confident I’ve found something.

Sunday morning’s warm up went very well indeed which helped me a bit, on used tyres from the day before I set my fastest lap of the weekend and felt pretty comfortable doing it, I actually managed about 6 or 7 laps on the bounce in that session which was about the most I’d done all weekend, the two 20 odd lap races were gonna be tough but the most important thing was not to rest and think we’d cracked it now as by the time the races came around the ambient and the track temperature would be way up, something that had caught me out in the past.

As we lined up on the grid for the start of race 1 I just felt the urge to get right amongst it, I was ready, or as ready as I could be anyway, I got a good or should I say a sensible start but I’m not joking when I tell you the exit of turn 1 pretty much told me all I needed to know about this race, it was going to be a bloody nightmare, I had no grip whatsoever and every time I exited a turn I’d lose a few bike lengths, I honestly considered pulling in to save my hand for race two but to cut a long story short I persevered and ended up 12^th, after the race the team could see my frustration and as soon as they downloaded the data from the bike they could see the problem, we just had to cross our fingers for race 2 and hope the problem would be gone.

I got a fairly sensible start again in race 2 and got much more amongst it, I nearly took myself out however trying to pass Guintoli and that cost me a bit of time and a couple of places but I chipped away and chipped away to finally come home 9^th, the top 20 position I’d dreamed of at the start of the week leading up to the race.

It’s important to remain positive right now and also to thank a few people for their hard work all weekend, all of the guys in the Clinica have been mega as always so big thanks for all your help and also to my side of the Althea Ducati garage, they never give up on me and despite the fact it was a difficult weekend they were behind me all the way so thanks you guys, Jarno form Alpinestars for sorting my gloves, Petra for all her hard work and Reg for taking care of everything else, you’ve all been mega, thanks to you all. Roll on Silverstone!!!!!!

Getting all tucked in!!!!!

Misano...

2010-07-07T09:57:00.002+02:00

What's that saying, wrong place at the wrong time......Kinda sums up my qualifying performances doesn't it really!!!!!

With Misano being the venue for my only podium last season i was obviously looking forward to getting back there racing, that and the fact that we'd tested there literally the week before so we were up to speed had me well excited!!!

The weekend really got going well, we were constantly up and around the top 5 positions and feeling pretty comfortable with it, the test the week before had really helped, in fact it didn't take too long at all to get going every bit as fast as we'd been the week previous.

Obviously writing this like two weeks after the event some of the details are a little bit sketchy but in provisional qualifying friday afternoon i think i ended up 4th or 5th which was more than ok for now.

The following morning however in 2nd qualifying we got going even better and comfortably with a pretty shabby lap jumped up to P2, however in hindsight this was maybe a little bit of my undoing as with the session being in the morning i.e far far cooler track temperature wise the bike was feeling really good but that afternoon when i got out on track ready for Superpole the bike never felt much different, it seemed to be working the same and i felt fast and confident but the lap times just weren't coming, we were quite a way off, we fired in a new set of tyres just before the end of the final practice and i think i got to within half a second i so of my morning time with a chew the screen kinda lap, oh shit, this is gonna be tricky.......indeed it was.

We scraped through the 1st session using only race tyres which is always good but it was the second session that went horribly wrong for a change, i'm not even gonna bore you with details, the long and the short of it was i couldn't go as fast even with a qualifier as i'd been in the morning on a race tyre so i missed the cut to go through and ended up a totally disgruntled 15th.

Morning warm up the following day brought a turn around in fortune again, the cooler temperature saw me go P1 just a tenth off my fastest time of the weekend with no problem whatsoever, blimey, all i needed was a good start and first couple of laps, how many times have you heard that from me!!!!!

For once this year i did get a sensible start and i got stuck right in through the first chicane making up about 8 places, yeeessssss i thought we're on t, on the run down to the real tight rights i had a look at sneaking another place or two and nearly went in too hot but then Camier came up my inside even hotter sitting me up and for the next few turns i got a bit humped and lost about 4 or 5 places due to being a bit off line, i got myself together and started going forward again but then i made a mistake and run straight on a bit into Quercia losing a couple of spots, i got them pretty much straight back which was handy then set after the group in front i caught and passed James Toseland and Johnny Rea and finally ended up 9th, not great.

For race two i knew i needed to get involved early on and not lose any time, my start wasn't too bad and i ran in the top ten before finishing up a slightly better 7th however this time i was much much closer to the front, sure Max had gone but the group for 2nd were about 3 or 4 seconds up the track which starting for 15th i wasn't too unhappy about.

So to sum up the weekend i guess all i can say is i've got to get it together in qualifying, once again i showed albeit at the wrong times that i've got the pace over a single lap and i have real good race pace over race duration i just need to start from the front to run at the front, hopefully we're getting there, big thanks to the boys for all their hard work, on wards and upwards or downwards as the case ended up to Imola for the official Pirelli test......

Hi mum!!!!!

Salt Lake smiles...

2010-06-02T21:10:00.002+02:00

Following my last blog yesterday you’ll know already that I’m in a happy mood and I’m smiling again, well I can tell you right this second I’ve got an even bigger smile on my face because not only did we get a free club class upgrade on the way to Orlando last week but we’ve been upgraded again free from New York to Heathrow so I’m sat here typing this in my club class bed, what a result!!!!!

I know yesterdays blog touched a tiny bit on how the races actually went in Salt Lake but I’m gonna take you through the weekend in detail anyway. As you may of read recently after the disaster that was Kyalami me and my team sat down to formulate a plan of attack, the funniest or coolest thing about the plan was that we were all on exactly the same page, I went away thinking do you know what, I’m not sure this ride by wire thing is working so good, I wish they’d just put me a proper analogue cable on so that I can get some feeling from this bike, when I sat down with them the first thing they said was, right we’ve been thinking and we think you should try the old system i.e. throttle cables in America and test this system back to back with ride by wire so that we can increase your feeling again with the bike. Talk about perfect, I couldn’t wait to get to America after Kyalami!!!!

We started out in the first session by doing an out in lap with the new throttle cable set up just so that the guys could download the data to get everything calibrated correctly, the only thing that wasn’t quite right was that there was no free play whatsoever in the cables so it was a bit sharp pulling away out of the pit lane, the immediate and I mean immediate sensation was like, ahhhhh, that’s better, mind you that said actually twisting the throttle felt unbelievably heavy compared to the super light ride by wire set up, I remember semi joking to myself about getting arm pump if I had to do more than about 5 laps but in terms of feeling like I said, ahhhh that’s better.

Straight after the out in I went out on my normal ride by wire bike and immediately over some of the bumps through turn 3 I thought bloody hell, this things a bit sharp, too sharp in fact, I did about 8 laps initially to get up to speed and the bike was working pretty good, I was enjoying riding and liking the track, after those laps it was time to head out on the cable bike for my first real go at it. For some reason the cable bike felt much faster than my ride by wire one, this was only an engine km thing but nonetheless the cable bike felt strong, the heavy sensation I mentioned of the analogue throttle wasn’t going away but at the same time it made the bike so much more manageable at the apex and allowed me to be smoother winding the gas on, fundamentally the bikes were set a bit different chassis wise, one was set pretty much how I had my bike there last year and the other still the same as our setting from Kyalami, it wasn’t until I got one more shot on the ride by wire bike i.e. the last years setting bike that I realised chassis wise it was a good step forward despite the cable one feeling better in terms of being able to feel more of what was going on. We ended the session with the 3^rd fastest time and went P1 for a little while, the first time I’d seen that in ages, I was really enjoying riding and everything was going to plan.

We made the decision immediately after the first session to set both bikes to the kyalami setting so that we had equal chassis’s to further back to back test the ride by wire/cable scenario and made short work of not only deciding which way to go throttle wise but also how to improve the bike further chassis wise, I made the decision to go analogue for the weekend so that all we had to do now was concentrate on finding a good race set up, we could see from the data the problem I’d been having all year on the ride by wire bike, the rear suspension gets too upset too early in the turn which loses speed and doesn’t do the tyre longevity any favours whatsoever, it was almost like the decision was there right in front of us in black and white THIS RIDE BY WIRE’S DOING THIS BUT THAT CABLE DOES THIS MUCH BETTER. Although we slipped from 3^rd to 6^th I was still very happy and certain we’d made the right choice.

Saturday mornings qualifying session went real well, I lead the session for a while and we concentrated on being consistent over a race duration, I dropped to 5^th by the end of the session but only because we didn’t fire in more tyres and concentrated as I said on durability, some more chassis changes were helping me out more and more and I was feeling good and confident that it’d be quite easy to make a big step lap times wise with fresh tyres so everything was still going exactly to plan.

We started the free practice session in the afternoon with the same tyres we’d been using in the morning as it was real important to go over race distance so we knew where we’d be at by the end of the races and the result was mega, my 24^th lap on the same pair of tyres was a 1.49.1 so we were right on the money to say the least, with a fresh pair of tyres in I lead the session for about 15 or 20 minutes and was happy to plug on with another load of laps rather than chasing a fast time at the end, I felt really relaxed and was enjoying riding now even more than at the beginning of the weekend!!!

For the first time in ages we got through the first Superpole using only a race tyre which was perfect, just what we needed, once again I was relaxed and feeling really confident.

The cock up came in Superpole 2, my initial 2 laps netted me P4 on my first qualifier, enough we thought to be safe to go through to the final session with another qualifying tyre left, perfect…….. As it turned out I got dropped to 5^th so the guys said right go out on your second qualifier, do an out lap exit the last turn only real hard and if you’re in the clear we’ll put BOX on your pitboard so abort the lap, right, ok, out lap, build up a little towards the end, nail the last turn hard, BOX P5, f***in excellent, now I’ve really really got a good shot at the front row, I completed the lap real slow so that I could save the tyre for the final exit, I had a real big smile on my face right up until the point when I pulled into Pit lane, the marshal guy waved me into the collecting area and I thought no mate, not me I’m through but then I saw one of my guys who looked like he was suicidal pointing to the collecting area so I got a bit confused, it turned out I was through right up to the point that the chequered flag came out so the guys gave me P5 BOX thinking I was through, I aborted my lap and course 3 or 4 of the guys pipped me by less than a 10^th of a second, I wasn’t happy to say the least but we were on it regardless even if it was going to be much much harder work from the 3^rd row….

Morning warm up passed without any dramas at all, we had to use some used tyres from the day before just to triple check on their performance and with morning warm up being a fair bit cooler track temperature wise the rear tyre didn’t work too well at all, we ended the session 3^rd or 4^th I think so if the temperature came up for the races we’d be in good shape. I did a practice start at the end of the session and it was my fastest ever start on a Ducati so if I could pull another one of them out of the bag, well…

My race one start was far from dreadful but it wasn’t perfect either and the long run down to turn 1 wasn’t helped when JT cut across the front of me so close that I had to roll the throttle to avoid a collision, I was there or thereabouts but Smrz’s bike blew unbeknown to him and he continued on all the way round the lap to the attitude turns, something that not even a minute or so later would cost me dearly, on lap 2 I entered the fast turn 3 left hander, threw the bike on it’s side and the rear snapped round so fast that I honestly thought I was going to have to hit the ejector button, fortunately or not depending how you look at it the bike snapped back in line sending me off track at high speed, I remember looking up and seeing the tyre wall heading in my direction at a pretty rapid rate of knots, I managed to slow just enough to make a turn but had to rejoin dead last, all I could do was get my head down and push as hard as possible to try to catch up so that’s exactly what I did and lap after lap I got further and further up the order, right at the end of the race I was on the back wheel of Troy Corser in 5^th and I looked at pulling the same pass on him as I had on a lot of the others, I think it was a bit too touch and go if I’d pull it off and after spending 20 laps busting my balls I’d feel pretty daft crashing on the penultimate lap or so I thought, I was so engrossed in catching troy that I misjudged the laps left and as we exited the final turn I saw the chequered flag and initially my heart sank, as I said I felt touch and go I could’ve made the pass but I was convinced there was 1 more lap which should of seen me be able to get pass to take my first top 5 of the year but it wasn’t to be.

The team were absolutely peaking when I returned to park ferme which was good to see, we’ve not had a lot to cheer about of late but it was nice to se them smiling and happy and long may it continue!!!

After the pace we had in race 1 I was really hopeful of a far better result in the 2^nd race, I knew if everything went to plan there could well be a podium up for grabs, my bike was fantastic in the first race and I actually had race winning pace, I lost 13 seconds on that second lap and finished 11 seconds behind the leader, you do the maths, I was feeling good!!!

I got another so so start and tried to settle in immediately, straight away though there was a bit of a problem, I had a bit of chatter from the rear tyre straight away and about 50% less grip on the corner exits, it really was a case of oh no, this is going to be a long old race, I battled the best I could but could only manage a 7^th after some difficult battles with some of the guys, that was far from the result I was hoping for but nonetheless it equalled my best weekend so far in Portimao, I’m really hopeful now that dropping the ride by wire is the way forward, I’m chomping at the bit to get out in Misano and keep the ball rolling, I really enjoyed that track last year and hope to emulate my results from ’09!!!

I’d like to say a big thank you to my team owner Genesio and to Ducati for arranging the cable throttle for me to test and to all my guys in my side of the box who worked so well this weekend, hopefully we’ve now turned a corner and can look forward to a far better second half of the season!!!!!

To do the most possible I arrived back at mums around lunch time this afternoon, got changed into my cycling gear and busted out 50 miles with one of my pals, jet lag and all, it wasn’t easy as I felt half asleep but it keeps the momentum going, bring on Misano!!!!!

Happy times...

2010-06-01T03:21:00.004+02:00

Fun, that's the way i perceive life should be, Petra and i took a few days out before Miller and as you may well of seen from some of the pics i've posted we went to Orlando, it was only 4 days out but boy did it do me the world of good, you see the reason i write all this is because my job, i.e racing a motorbike is to me the coolest job in the world bar none, sure it could pay probably 50 times better then we might earn something like footballers but you see the thing is that's not what it's all about to me and it took those 4 days out to realise, the problem has been that things racing wise haven't been going at all well, let's be honest now, we flew in all the preseason tests, last year i grant you we were fast in Portimao but this year, Portimao, Valencia and Phillip Island, we were on it, to the point where i didn't even care if someone went a quarter of a second quicker in any given session as i knew within that we could do it, i quite honestly felt on it, this is to be my year... two massive high sides later and a string of what are to me dissapointing results had gotten me all confused though, you see the problem here is that racing is such a massive part of my life and every time things don't go my way in a session, a race, a practice whatever i become frustrated and just try harder and harder and harder but actually that just doesn't work with a Ducati, the harder you try the slower you go. Now, back to Orlando, 4 days out, time to relax and reflect, Petra and i talked for ages and i realised the problem this year is that i'm just not relaxing and enjoying the only job i've ever dreamed of having all my life nowhere near enough, this is supposed to be fun, it's all i've ever wanted and i don't want to look back one day and think cor, i travelled the world, got paid to race bikes, the only job i ever wanted since i was a kid and i wasted it by not actually enjoying myself, In Salt Lake this weekend i had a lot of fun, i really enjoyed my bike again, she's my baby again, we've changed back to an analogue throttle and i've got my feeling back, i've read some pretty negative stuff that sometimes makes me want to front out the people and say "do you know what, you're nothing but an armchair world champion, what the f**k do you know about how hard we have to try to get anywhere at world level???" people talk about motivation, high pay cheques for nothing, parenthood etc and it just makes me laugh because do you know what, the only thing i've been guilty of so far this year is trying too hard, not having fun and being too serious, this weekends been mega, i've loved it, enjoyed myself on track, been far more relaxed off track and i absolutely can't wait until Misano, hopefully we can qualify better and be up the front, Shakey's smiling again!!! take it easy and keep the faith, Shakey #67

Upgrades!!!

2010-05-23T10:55:00.001+02:00

How cool is that, we arrived at Gatwick earlier ready to fly to Orlando, i've never been so i'm quite excited anyway, we contemplated upgrading to business class for a special fee of £399 but decided against it then when we got to the desk to check in Petra asked for a window seat and the lady called through and came back saying, i can do better than that, take a Club seat, a free upgrade.... What a bloody result!!!!!

Kyalami...

2010-05-17T10:13:00.004+02:00

I’m not a very happy boy this morning to be honest, you see the reason for this is my results again yesterday, going into Monza I knew we were going to have a tough weekend, that’s the reason I needed a couple of strong races at Assen to keep us happy, Monza was of course exactly as difficult as we knew it would be but once that race was out of the way I really looked forward to a better run of tracks for us and the Ducati, I was particularly looking forward to the race here in South Africa as last year the Xerox boys literally smoked everyone and the bikes we have are in theory a step closer to the spec that they had last year so it’s all good right….

For the first free practice session things went ok ish, fundamentally we had a bike that stopped and turned in ok but the thing made the already bumpy Kyalami circuit feel like a whoop section of a motocross track which was making pushing the front into the corner entries particularly tricky as when I was on the side of the tyre it was like being given an uppercut by the handlebars which isn’t exactly what you need!! Nonetheless we went ok, we started the session in P2 and held it for about 20 odd minutes and I was happy again, happy or should I say relieved, it’s been a while since I’ve seen a number like that on my pit board!!, I ended the session 5^th but felt pretty confident that as we got the bike riding the bumps better we’d find a good chunk more lap time wise so all good.

The first qualifying practice went a fair bit better in terms of lap time but unfortunately position wise I dropped to 9^th, we worked hard on getting the setting of the bike right but even harder on trying to get the bike pushing forward out of the turns, I’ve had a feeling since the last races that one of our bikes problems is that the traction control is actually hindering a bit as apposed to helping and perhaps restricting the bike a bit too much so my engineer came along with some different settings to this race for me to try so we worked a bit on that too, my feeling was getting better with the bike in general however it was the Mine shaft section of the track that was hurting us the most, for the first two sectors I’d get green sectors with a provisional 3^rd or 4^th place but sector 3 finished that in a big way as I was losing up to 6^th’s in that one sector, I knew the problem but we couldn’t seem to get around it, either my bike would treat the bumps like motocross jumps or if we softened things up it would be all wallowy and run wide through there which hurt us big time speed wise up the hill. Work to do….

Qualifying practice Saturday didn’t really see us make a lot of progress to be honest, in fact we dropped down the order to 12^th or 13^th I think, we continued to keep our heads down though and worked hard to find a good compromise, in all other sectors we were going pretty good and maybe losing a tenth or two but the same sector was causing me big problems still, I even resorted to trying to follow a few people through the sector to see if I was doing anything wrong riding wise but the problem was I couldn’t push the entry to the left and hold a tight line over the bumps which would then make me run a tiny bit wide, my change of direction was too slow making me need to make a much bigger deal of the right and I’d end up getting dropped by like 8-10 bike lengths, shit this was frustrating!!

For the free practice session we went out and worked real hard, for the rest of the track we were pretty much bang on, I’d improved everywhere else but the one dreaded sector, right towards the final few minutes of the session we made a breakthrough, well, you could say we made two, both bikes had slightly different ways of improving the feeling from the front end feeling but I wasn’t sure which was best as we got literally about a lap or so on each but the problem now was that we were going straight into Super pole, exactly what happened last time out at Monza.

For some reason the team chose a bit of a strange plan for Super pole, we knew already that we had one slightly iffy qualifier and one good one, usually we exit immediately on a new pair of race tyres then if needed we use a qualifier to get through the first Super pole but this time they said we should use the iffy qualifier first then a race tyre, I wasn’t at all convinced but went with it, I used the qualifier and went 11^th straight away and thought right ok all good, I’d only improved by 3 10^th’s but now I had the new rear race tyre which could maybe be better anyway, as I came round to start my laps on the race tyre I’d dropped to 16^th, the cut off point, b******s I thought, this ain’t good, I pushed real hard, too hard in fact and made some mistakes then to start my final lap I’d dropped to 18^th so I was out, I rode that lap absolutely on the limit and had some big slides, I went three or four tenths faster but missed out on going through by less than a tenth of a second, I was literally fuming, I was so p****d off you wouldn’t believe, I don’t think I’ve felt that low ever.

It took me a fair while to calm down after the session so I went off to the clinica guys to get a massage and loosen up my arms which were feeling pretty tight and whilst there I had a thought, more of the thought later….. When I got back i sat down and had a meeting with my guys and we talked, there’s some really strange stuff going on with my bike settings wise right now, both the front forks and the rear shock have springs so much heavier than last year which means less grip but my guys came up with an idea, all this year with this bike (the ride by wire throttle bike) I’ve struggled with grip, every time they make the bike softer it wallows, yet the softer setting is nowhere near as soft as my settings from last year, my feeling with the throttle isn’t good and every single session I complain that the throttle is too aggressive, the actual amount of twist of the ride by wire throttle compared to the cable throttle is much different, probably three quarters the amount of the cable one so what we think is happening is when I get to the apex I take the throttle to balance the bike but because the ride by wire throttle is so short I actually take far too much initial throttle, this upsets the bike immediately but then when the bike starts to slide and shake there’s almost no feeling or throttle left to control the slide with so the reason for the heavier springs is the throttle’s putting too much initial torque through the rear tyre causing the bike to squat too much and get upset, now in America we’re going to back to back test one bike with ride by wire and the other with a cable throttle which I had last year so I’m well excited, I’ve always been really smooth on the throttle and because of that pretty gentle on tyres but this year so far all of this seems to have gone out of the window.

Morning warm up yesterday went real well, I rode around the whole session behind James Toseland and caught him by the end of the session, my ideal time was more than quick enough to be competitive in the races but starting from 18th was always going to be tricky….

As the lights went out I got an absolutely mega initial launch and run down into turn one, someone, I think Ruben sat up on the inside of me which in turn sat me up and made me go wide, I lost time on the exit of turn two and got humped on the run up to the corner that leads onto the back straight, eventually after some argy bargy things settled down a bit and I got in a battle with Sykes and Xaus, the race for me was so frustrating, basically it went like this, stuck behind Sykes despite having a much faster rhythm, pass Sykes, immediately at the next straight get re taken by him, line him up again, make a pass, immediately he’d drive back past and so on, this went on all race long and drove me mad, eventually I broke him but it cost me so so much time there wasn’t a lot of time to catch and pass anyone else, I did manage to pass Haga and I think I ended up a pretty dejected 15^th, race two had to be better right???

I knew that in race two there could be no nonsense in the first couple of laps otherwise I’d get nowhere again, I did get a better run initially and settled in ok, I made a couple of passes and after a couple of laps I managed to get passed Guintoli, then some others, I could see Sykes up ahead and thought oh no here we go again, once again I passed him, got passed on the next straight, passed him got passé back and this went on for a bit, on one lap Tom made a bit of a mistake going town into one of the final turns but I took a look but wasn’t quite close enough but then Scassa came through and sat Tom up, no no no I thought, now I really need to pass Tom or I’ll be stuck here, once again, passed him, got passed on the next straight, this went on for two or three laps and Luca had pulled a couple of seconds on Tom, I eventually made a pass that stuck and started to chase down Luca again, I started to catch him but run out of laps so I ended up a slightly happier but highly frustrated 13^th.

Coming away from Kyalami I’m really looking forward to the race in America, sure there’s a real long straight there that’s gonna hurt us but it’s a mega circuit that I like a lot, I’ve got the cable throttle to test which should enable us to soften the bike up a bit and help me to be smoother so it’s all good, our fortunes have to change. Keep with me people, it will get better!! Shakey#67

The story of my Kyalami, passing and being re passed by Sykes on the next straight!!!

Travel woes...

2010-05-13T20:56:00.002+02:00

Well, we managed to actually get here to South Africa which in itself was a bit of a mission, I woke up Tuesday morning and checked the internet only to see that our flight to Madrid had been cancelled, great, don’t get me wrong I understand fully how fortunate I am to get to travel the world and see lots of different places but when things seem to go wrong they go properly wrong for us!!!

After some panic phone calls to my travel agent we managed to get our flight brought forward to the flight before however this didn’t really inspire me with confidence as it was our later flight from to Madrid that was cancelled and I figured that if our later flight was cancelled how likely were we to get our later still connection to Johannesburg……

As it turned out when we got to Heathrow the people on the desk had no idea whatsoever whether or not our flight to South Africa would go, this posed a problem for me, basically my thinking was this, if I’m stranded in the Uk I can go back to mums, if I’m stranded in Madrid what on earth do I do there?

Fortunately everything panned out ok ish in the end, we sat in Madrid airport for about 6 hours with nobody able to tell us whether or not we’d be flying but finally about 20 odd minutes late they started boarding our plane, by this point we were pretty tired and just wanted to get on the plane and get off to sleep. I had to laugh once sat on board though, sat across the isle from us was a guy so fat he couldn’t get his belt on, the temperature on the plane felt about 500 degrees so matey was sweating and humming like a skunk but to actually make matters worse the guy in front of him pulled his shoes off and the smell was so crude I’ve never smelt anything like it, I told Petra, look darling, lets look on the Brightside, if we struggle to get off to sleep just get down on your hands and knees, take a deep breath of old stinky feet and we’ll be out cold for hours!!!!!! I won’t even begin to tell you how badly I wished I’d booked us business class, I even offered to pay on board but Iberia refused despite the fact business class was practically empty, I don’t rate that airline at all, this was and hopefully will be the first and last time we ever fly with Iberia….

The new Tomtom I brought just before Monza managed to redeem itself here in South Africa, when I used it to get from Bergamo airport to Monza it did indeed get us to the national park that the circuit is inside but it took us to some mud track path that had a gate at the top that was locked so we couldn’t actually get in but this time it got us straight from Johannesburg airport direct to the hotel so I’m happy with it now!!

I slept mega last night, i was so tired that we went to bed around 10pm and never woke until 8am then about 8-30 i fell asleep again until about 11, i can't remember the last time we had the chance to do that!!!

I’ve been along to the circuit today for a look around and it’s such a cool setting, little or should I say big African looking huts and palm trees everywhere, it’s real nice, it’s definitely not improved at all from last year track surface wise, it’s like a motocross track on tarmac but I guess that’s partly the fun of the place, I’m really looking forward to getting out riding tomorrow, I know we’ve got a photo shoot for a big American magazine tomorrow morning ahead of the Miller round so we’ll see what that entails, other than that it’s all good, I’ll keep you all posted on how things go, take it easy, Shakey #67

Monza... As tough as we thought it'd be!!!

2010-05-12T16:05:00.002+02:00

I don’t think it will really come as too much of a surprise when I tell you that we knew we were going to be a little bit up against it at Monza, don’t take this comment the wrong way, you could think to yourselves what on earth is he on about Carlos has won a race and had a few podiums this year which is indeed true however when it comes to top speed we’re a fair way off of the fast bikes, i.e. the four cylinder bikes and Monza is basically WSB’s version of Snetterton back in BSB and trying to win there with up to 18kph down on the quick bikes wouldn’t happen either, here’s a bit of food for thought, from the exit of the last turn to the end of the start finish straight we were losing just under half a second per lap!!!!!!

It was really important at Monza to remain 110% positive and push to the maximum from the word go because if we were ever gonna have to work somewhere this would be the place, I arrived feeling optimistic and went out in Friday free practice revved right up, to be honest the bike setting wise felt a little bit off in terms of balance and wasn’ t letting me push too hard, certainly nowhere near as hard as I knew we could go but immediately we got to work on improving things, quite early in the session I had a bit of a technical drama, I was flat out in 5^th approaching my braking marker for the Parabolica turn, hit the brakes, back shifted and all of a sudden things didn’t sound or feel right so I had to run straight on, the problem was that normally I would go back to 2^nd and us that engine braking to pull the bike into the turn, well, you don’t get engine braking with the clutch in so I went flying straight on, everything was going fine and I was pretty much sure I had it under control but I hit the wet grass just before the gravel whilst trying my hardest to get stopped and that threw the bike sideways then in the gravel it kind of gripped and to cut a long story short I dropped the bike at about 20 mph to have probably the most pain free crash I’ve ever had!! The worst thing about it was the scooter marshal who’s job it was couldn’t find the key to the gate to get me back so I was stuck for what seemed like ages, he had a big four stroke scooter maybe a 250 or something and got on the back of me to get back to the paddock, I was so revved up at the delay that I nearly lost the poor guy off the back of his own scooter on route back!!!! I got back out on the spare bike and we continued working although that bike had a fundamentally different setting that we couldn’t change back in time we knew the direction we needed to head in, I felt more than confident that there was loads of time to come from both me and the bike but nonetheless 17^th and 18^th for Carlos and I wasn’t the norm….

Things for us in provisional qualifying improved a little, we were down to one bike because of the problem from the first session and the fact that the track started out nearly wet but not wet enough for wets meant the bike we were using was set up wet, in terms of lap time we found a fair bit and improved the feeling from the bike but even so things weren’t progressing at the rate they needed to be and everybody else had found at least the same amount if not more, at one point in the damp conditions I was up to 6^th or 7^th and feeling much happier but I think as the track gradually became nearly full dry I slipped back to 14^th, this time though I was more than positive though as on a dry track with a wet setting I’d improved a fair chunk lap time wise and I was certain that the work we’d be doing over night with the setting of the bike would help me to make a big step for Saturday free practice.

I was right about the feeling from the bike on Saturday, I immediately felt much happier and knocked about a second and a half off of my time from the day before, of course as always that in turn brings on a whole new bunch of problems to overcome and this time it was the front suspension that was the limit as braking as deep and as late as I needed to in order to claw back more valuable 10^th’s kept sending the bike to sideways so I was having to release the brakes a little then re apply them which meant I kept missing my apex’s.

Qualifying and Superpole didn’t go at all to plan, Petra left my usual two dry helmets on my stand in the garage and said in jest don’t use one of them until the final 8, bloody hell, no pressure then eh, I don’t think we’ll be using the last one!! A bit dismissive sounding I know but that was what we were up against, in the end I only managed 15^th place in Superpole which I was pretty disappointed about as I was hoping for a top ten, in the first two sessions there were plenty of guys being dicks and holding others up through the Ascari chicane which I felt was pretty out of order, I got messed up once big time and once not quite so bad, it’s obvious why they do it but bloody annoying at the same time.

For morning warm up we found ourselves trying a few different things with the bike and it felt good, I felt much happier on the brakes so generally it was all good, we had to use a different type of rear tyre to the one we’d be racing, one that was a harder compound and with the cool conditions it wasn’t good so the guys put in a used version of the one from the day before and I went back out and got going much better again so I was feeling happier about the races now.

As the lights went out for the first race I got a sensible ish start and as we stormed down towards the new layout chicane things were looking ok, I got up the inside of a couple of people and tried to follow Haga through, the race settled down really quickly to be honest but without me being nowhere near as close to the front group as I would’ve hoped, I was racing for a bit with Max Neuckichrner and Carlos and finally ended up in a bit of a battle with Luca Scassa, he and I passing and re passing each other didn’t really do us any favours to be honest as Max and Carlos came back towards us, on the last lap Max passed me down the back straight and there really wasn’t anything I could do about it so that was that P13, not great.

For race two we changed a couple of little things with the bike to help in places where I felt I was struggling in race 1 but not too much, to be honest the only thing that was going to make a difference to the result was a much better run through the first chicane to grab myself more places, this time I got a bit of a better start and was pretty much up alongside JT when it all started to go wrong as we all braked I saw James run out of room and clip the back of somebody then all hell broke loose, when Ruben got skittled turning into the first part of the chicane right in front of me I backed off a little as I thought I was bang on target for getting collected by his bike, with all the carnage I was convinced the race would be stopped anyway but then on the exit of the chicane everyone just went for it and the race carried on which left me slightly trailing behind, nonetheless I pressed on as hard as I could, again got in a bit of a battle with Max and Carlos then set about reeling in Scassa again, with about 8 laps to go Smrz passed me down the back straight and I thought hold on a minute, how on earth did that happen, his bike so I’m led to believe perhaps isn’t quite the same spec as mine but bloody hell it ain’t slow!!!!, I tagged onto the back of him and he towed us to the back of Scassa, with the three of us running together Smrz did the same to Scassa as he had to me down the back straight but by now there was only 1 lap to go, I lined Luca up for a pass into Ascari, and just preyed that I’d get my bike stopped in time, he braked and then immediately I did, initially I thought nooooooo no no no, I’ve blown it and gone in too deep but I managed to make the entrance and held him off until the line to take P9, to be honest it felt like a rostrum getting into the top 10, as you can probably imagine it’s difficult, in fact near on impossible to get worked up and excited by a 9^th place but for what it was worth I was almost happy!!

I’m very hopeful now that our bad track is now out of the way, as I said at the start this was always going to be our bogey track and it sure was, I stayed 100% positive all weekend though and worked hard with my guys to arrive at the races in the best shape possible, sure 13^th and 9^th is a total disaster by any standards but if you only knew how hard I had to work for them, well, I guess you’d feel semi the same as me. It’s on now to Kyalami, last year the Xerox bikes smoked everybody there, lets hope we can finally get this year turned around and pick up some decent results from here on in, I want some Champagne man!!!!!!! Thanks to everybody for your continued support, here’s hoping we’re going to have something to properly cheer about real soon, Shakey #67

Trying to squeeze every last bit out of my baby!!!!

Green fingers!!!

2010-04-30T20:08:00.002+02:00

Blimey, i didn't think i'd ever see the day where i wrote to you guys to tell you i'd been gardening, the way i see it i have a good excuse, some of the guys from my team had a fever at the weekend and i seem to have come down with a mild case of man flu, in fairness things seem to be improving because i'm feeling better again today but i reckon that's because it's obviously gone to my head, usually the only two things i go through my garden for are my garage and the swimming pool but today i got right amongst it green finger style, chopping palm trees, clearing weeds, i was there, what a ball ache it is though, can't see myself subscribing to gardeners monthly anytime soon.

Assen races....

2010-04-30T16:53:00.003+02:00

Yet another overdue race report i know but this one's for a good reason, I've been bloody gardening all morning ha ha!!!

Seriously now, lets fill you guys in what went on...

It all got off to a pretty bad start to be honest, the week started with Petra being stranded in Canada due to the volcanic ash, then when we finally got her home only for our flights to the UK to be cancelled, after then driving to the UK to collect the motorhome we got as far as Dover before the motorhome died and lost all charge in the batteries so a call to Midlife got a temporary fix on that then i think despite leaving mums at 5-30am we finally rocked up in the paddock at Assen around 9-30pm, a long old day to say the least!!!!

Anyway enough of all that, i was really looking forward to riding the new layout of the circuit which had already shown the track to be around 2 seconds a lap faster when Johnny Rea tested there, the new section was definitely an eye opener, shit, flat out to the rev limiter in 5th gear roll the throttle and peel in, god knows what the entry speed is but it's properly fast!!!!

Free practice and provisional qualifying all passed without any major dramas, we were in reasonable shape although not quite as close to the pointy end as usual but we were far from panicking, in the free practice session before Superpole we made a big break through in terms of the setting of the bike, we basically stiffened everything up a bit as i felt that lap times wise we were pretty much at the limit for the softness of the bike but immediately in practice the bike felt loads better so we fired in a pair of tyres that were to be our chosen race tyres and did a longer run to see how the durability would be and it went mega, i did lots of fast laps and ended up doing just over 3/4's race distance whilst still turning out good and i mean good lap times, to say i was quietly confident inside was an understatement!!!

I know i seem to say it every weekend but all we needed was a bit of luck to get through Superpole, i did a flying lap in the first session on new race tyres that ended up being more than good enough to go through, in fact i think it was my fastest lap of the weekend, a 1.35.8, after pulling that out of the bag on race tyres that inner confidence doubled and i wasn't thinking hmm, maybe Supepole 2 i was thinking, we could be up for Pole here or a front row at the very least..... however it wasn't to be, i made a mistake on my first qualifier and pulled a 1.35.9 and then in the final session we used the last one and it was absolute toilet, i knew from the exit of turn 1 i wouldn't be able to go quick as i pinned it on the ext and the rear started to spin real early meaning i had to roll the throttle for the kink before the long right turn 2 0r 3. I ended up doing another 1.35.9 but it was only good enough for P7, nevertheless 2nd row so it was still all to play for.

Morning warm up the following day was bizarre, we exited with two new tyres albeit the rear not the compound we'd be using for the race and i pushed for a couple of laps but the rear felt crap, i came in and put in a used version of the one we'd be using for the races and immediately went P4, it wasn't until after warm up had finished that my Engineer told me that it was the tyre that had done the 15 laps run the day before so that inner confidence went right back up again, bring on the races!!!!

Race 1, what can i say, it started ok but from the get go it was obvious there was a problem, i absolutely rode my heart out but couldn't do anything, the rear tyre was crap, it spun on the rim a bit and had so little grip that i couldn't flick the bike into tighter turns quick as the rear of the bike kept coming round on me, the race for me was a total disaster, i was around a second a lap slower than the run i's done the day before and i was pretty pissed by the tie i got back to the box, the team weren't happy either but like i told them, this ain't bulls**t, check the data, you'll se exactly what the problem is and sure enough they could see so we regrouped and planned our attack for race two.

We changed a couple of little things as the problems we'd encountered in the 1st race made the bike work in a different way but for race 2 the rear felt a million times better, i got another half decent start and was running on the back of the front group but pretty much immediately i had a big vibration problem, i'll be 100% honest with you i couldn't figure out what the problem was, i didn't know if it was the front brakes, the clutch, the front tyre it made no sense at all but basically every time i closed the throttle and took the brakes the bike would vibrate like mad to the point where i started missing apex's and making mistakes, the only good thing was that it was pretty consistent so i semi knew what to expect and where, after a bit of a battle with Biaggi i got my head down to get back in touch with the group again and was catching up but i braked for turn 1 and got a little bit more vibration than i'd anticipated so i had to run on straight, from that point in it was just a case of push to the max but bring it home which i managed to do albeit down in 7th but much much closer to the front in terms of time. the team were much happier but when i explained my problems they looked a bit baffled, it turned out that one of the bolts that held the engine in place had broken and every time i closed the throttle the engine was moving and that was what was causing the problem, once they'd seen the problem they were gutted for me but equally pleased that despite the problem we were real close to the front.

Unfortunately Assen was another somewhat typical weekend, we need some luck, if any of you guys know where i can buy some i'll pay top money for it, ha ha!!! It's all good though, we'll go forwards now and on to Monza which could be difficult for us but straight after that we've got a good run of tracks, i'm really confident things are going to turn around soon and can't wait to give my tea, you guys and myself plenty of results that we can all smile about!!! Talk to you soon, Shakey #67

Valencia races

2010-04-14T22:36:00.003+02:00

Another well overdue update i know, but, hey better late than never right...?? I thought i'd give you my view on the Valencia weekend and how it went down for me, to be honest, something you'll see me say on here quite often, i really was looking forward to this race, preseason testing went incredibly well despite two days turning into just half a day so i was full on ready to go despite the fact Valencia used to be my WSB equivalent of Mallory park!!

Thursday morning i went out cycling with Cal Crutchlow which was good fun, he's a funny kid and always has some amusing stories to tell, we did 30 miles together outside of the circuit with a few climbs and then finished off with 3 or 4 laps of the circuit, like i said, all good fun!!

Onto more serious riding, Friday morning came as a bit of a shock, as i said the test went well but with the bike set identically the difference in track temperature made it feel a million miles away, we plugged away and worked hard on one set of tyres to be sure we improved the bike step by step rather than just throwing tyres at the job so it was all good.

In the provisional qualifying session that afternoon things got marginally better initially, we continued working on a set of tyres and were making progress but being on the wrong end of the top 10 wasn't what i was hoping for at all, however, towards the end of the session we fired in a set of softer tyres which were to be the same as the ones i'd probably end up racing and immediately went P1, easily, bloody hell i thought, there i was in a flat spin wondering how they were all going so fast and all i needed was to put these spec tyres in and that was it, job done, with about 10 minutes remaining in the session we made a few more changes as the tyres had helped a lot but also brought with them a few other little problems so we ended up slipping to third but hey, i'll take that!!

Saturday morning went really well, we started the session on the same set of tyres of the day before to get some laps on them and then went back up the order a bit with fresh tyres, the bike felt fantastic and i was really happy despite dropping to P4 at the end of the session, bring on Superpole i thought, i'm right up for it......

That to be honest was where it all started to go wrong, for the warm up session prior to Superpole i went out feeling great, we put a new pair of tyres in to basically try a longer run but within two laps it was obvious there was something wrong, the bike had real bad chatter on the rear, no grip and the front tyre felt square, hmm, not what we need, i didn't even bother staying out and came straight in, i explained the problems and the guys fired in another new rear tyre, this was marginally better but i was still having big dramas and was about a second and a half to 2 seconds off what i'd been doing that morning. Within about 3 laps i was back in the box and this time the guys changed the clutch, they could see on the data the problems i was having but we were struggling to get to the bottom of what was causing it, another two or three laps proved the problem was still there but we were running out of time, the guys checked over the bike 100% and were fairly sure the problems were caused by the front tyre, the only trouble was the next time i'd get to try it was the 1st Superpole session.......

I went out fingers crossed thinking right come on Shakey, we can do this, front row front row, i pushed full gas on my flying lap but the lap time was crap, a 1.35.1, i'd done a 34.2 that morning on the same tyres, not great, the following lap i really hung it all out to pull a 34.7, still half a second off what we knew was possible but with that i took the gamble to sit in the box and hope, fortunately i made it through to the next session albeit in last place ;-(

As you can imagine i was more than a little relieved to get through and was desperately hoping that things would improve in the next session when i got to use the 1st of my qualifiers, unfortunately it didn't, i did another 34.8 on race tyres but could only manage a 34.2 (my race tyre lap time form the morning) which left me a very very unhappy 12th, not good.

Morning warm up was pretty steady, i pushed obviously but concentrated really hard on riding relaxed rather than tensing up like i had in Superpole, i was still feeling pretty good about the races although starting from the tail end of the third row was always going to be tricky.

As the lights went out in race 1 i didn't get a very good start at all, too much wheelie and a 2.9 0-60 did me no favours at all, however after a couple of moves i the first few laps i'd got back to where i'd started and noticed that nobody was really getting away, i kept my head down and was on the back wheel of Lanzi and Fabrizio when Michel went down, Lanzi took a real tight entry to turn 6 so i swept out wide to try to get a run on him on the exit then the next thing i know i was on my arse sliding towards the gravel, the most annoying thing about it was that the data showed i was actually 2kph slower when i crashed than the lap before, gutted..

For race two i was determined to make amends, not that my start would show that, another shocker did me no favours at all, to be honest after the normal 1st couple of laps of pushing and shoving it was all over, the red flag came out due to Simon Andrews crash so it was back to the box to do it all over again in an aggregate race, great..

In the restart i never got such a bad start but it was the 1st couple of turns that made the difference, i immediately settled in in about 6th or 7th and things were looking good, i caught and passed Johnny Rea which was good but Leon Haslam had already pulled a couple of seconds on me and despite holding the gap i couldn't catch him back up, on the track i ended up finishing 5th which means my first top 5 of the year but on aggregate i got 8th which i was pretty bummed about.

I'm glad we got things turned around a little by the end of the weekend but this time i really can't help but wonder what might of been had we not have had the problems on Saturday afternoon so i know now we'll go onto Assen feeling good and feeling strong, that rostrum can't be much further away now, i'm gonna be pushing full gas training wise to ensure i'm in tip top condition come the weekend so lets keep our fingers crossed, thank you to all of you for your continued support, our time WILL come, take it easy Shakey #67

Leading the pack of Rea, Toseland, Crutchlow, Guintoli and Smrz, i held em off to the flag!!!

Bit more practise and i'll master that knee down thing i'm sure of it!!!!!

Portimao...

2010-04-01T20:25:00.004+02:00

Well, as you can probably imagine, 2 race meetings and 2 100 mph highsides were far from what i was hoping for after a fantastic pre season test schedule but unfortunately that's what i've had so far, let's be positive though, at the end of the day 6th and 7th from Portimao was far better than 10th and 12th or whatever it was!!

I was really looking forward to getting back to one of my favourites circuits to ride, finishing the preseason test there in 3rd was great but to be honest we were quite a way off being really comfortable there with the new bike and since the tests we'd made a fair bit of progress with the set up of the bike. I was actually really happy once we got underway on Friday, for the 1st free practice session we made a real good plan and stuck to it thoroughly, basically we had two different types of front forks and two different specs of rear shocks to try, along with that and some slightly different engine management settings that we never got the chance to test before, we stuck to the plan like glue and used just one pair of tyres to get through all the work so to finish 12th and about half a second off was no drama at all.

For the afternoon qualifying session we carried on with our work combining the best bits from both bikes and working out a good setting, i'd be lying through my teeth if i said i went all out for qualifying, after Australia's escapades the last thing i needed was another big crash so P7 for me was more than ok, that combined with the fact that we'd found a really good direction for the Saturday morning free practice, we were on it, less than half a second off pole and feeling really comfortable.

Saturdays improvements were obvious immediately, within 4 laps i'd gone P1 and was feeling good, i had a few little moments though that i hadn't been having before but then again my rhythm was quite a lot faster so that was to be expected, i'd just done my fastest lap of the morning so far and knew the lap i was about to complete was real good too, as i peeled into the final turn in 3rd at just over 100mph everything was good but then as i touched the gas on the side of the tyre the rear let go, no no no no i thought as it came right around in what seemed like slow motion and then as if i had a catapult up my a hole up i went, initially i thought it's ok, i've got it, i've got it but as i came crashing down back on top of the bike i missed the bars and down i went, sure bouncing along the track at 100mph hurts, rolling through the gravel doesn't do you many favours either but when i came to a standstill or lay still depending on how you take it i didn't stay put so much for pain but for utter devastation, i was so gutted that this had happened to me again, i was like why me... funny thing was which just goes to show how lucky or unlucky depending on how you look a look at it was that quite literally the only thing any different whatsoever was being about 20-30cm wider when i got on the gas than the lap before, the speed, braking, taking the throttle, amount of throttle taken was all identical, spewing!!!!!

I decided to sit out the rest of the remaining 20 0dd minutes of the session, luckily i was in far better shape than i was after Australia but giving myself a bit of time out seemed like the master plan.

Much to my relief everything was absolutely fine on the bike that afternoon, of course i was a bit sore to say the least but immediately i was fully back up to speed, and faster!!!

I'm gutted about the way Superpole went, we thought it was going to be difficult to get through the first knockout using only a race tyre because the times were so so close but we pulled it off easily, in the 2nd session i matched the time on the same rear race tyre and needed just .3 or something to go through so we fired in the first qualifier and off i went to bang out a pretty average lap albeit my fastest ever lap around there to go P2, I really really thought we were in with a real good shot at Pole after that lap, as i said it was far from tidy and i still had another tyre left for the final exit.

The team and i chose to wait a second then exit on the new rear immediately, bang in 2 laps and see where it takes us, as i said i was right up for it. As i started my first flyer i had a few little moments that i put down to trying too but by the end of the lap i could tell it was more than me making mistakes, the grip just wasn't there, i came round fully expecting a crap lap, sure enough it was nearly half a second off of the scrappy lap i'd done before, i tried one more but that was even worse so P7 it was then.

Morning warm up went incredibly well, sure P7 never looked special but for some reason the rear tyre we were due to put more laps on developed a problem so i did the session on the hardest rear we had and was real real fast considering.

So with that we had our plan for the race, the only thing we hadn't done due to the Saturday AM crash and losing out on putting laps on the rear in warm up was to find out how the bike would work over full race distance, oh how that would cost me......

As the lights went out in race one i got a fairly sensible start, i settled down in around 5th but after a couple of laps i got up to 3rd, the problem was Leon and Max were a couple of seconds ahead and despite my best efforts just about matching them was about the best i could do and as the laps wore on that got more and more difficult, basically my bike was set mega for a fast lap but unfortunately as race distance wore on it started to get harder and harder to maintain my lap time, eventually i dropped to a disappointing 6th but as soon as i got back we had a plan for race two, fingers crossed then.....

Basically for race two we stiffened up the bike for race two, after looking at the data we could see the problem was that the bike was too soft, i got another ok start and ran in the top 5 or so but after just a couple of laps i was sliding a lot more than race one, basically the stiffer setting took away some grip, i was really frustrated, it was one of the longest races of my life because i just felt like i couldn't do anymore, either way like i said 6th and 7th is a big step in the right direction.

Although Portimao turned into a somewhat frustrating weekend i'm really excited about Valencia, it was there in the test that we made a bit of a breakthrough and i'm gonna be on a mission training wise beforehand to ensure i'm in tip top condition for the races, the master plan has to be to stay on the bloody thing that weekend and try to start fighting for the podiums i know we're capable of, lets keep it lit and talk soon, take it easy, Shakey #67

A shot from Portimao, i like this photo!!!!

A confession....

2010-03-21T19:08:00.002+01:00

Well, what you may ask is his confession, well, to be quite honest, i'd forgotten all about the blogs bit on my website, you see the thing is, the old system i had with just doing diaries had me thinking about just doing diaries but now with the Twitter link which i try to keep right on top of, well, i kinda forgot about the blog thing.

There's probably a million and one things i could tell you right now, but it would just be extended versions of the bits and pieces i put on Twitter so we'll talk about now and the future for a minute instead. I've been down to the motorhome today to get that all sorted out ready for it's road trip down to Portugal only to find out that the place i leave it had a big electrical drama recently so as you can imagine the thing was as dead as a dodo but i think we've pretty much got it sorted now, plugged the electrics in to another socket and hopefully when we get back there it will be ok, i can't quite make my mind up yet when to leave, either tomorrow evening or tuesday morning, i know from experience it's a bloody long drive so we'll see.

Training's been going pretty good of late, i've done a fair bit of cycling and been in the gym too so i'm feeling good ahead of round two, i'll be out on the bicycle again tomorrow morning hopefully and i'm taking the bike to Portimao with me so that i can do a bit of pedalling at the circuit wednesday and thursday to relax.

We spent a few days in England earlier this week, i brought back our car as it needed a service but we've decided to sell it now anyway so it stayed over in the UK after the service to get it gone, not sure what we're going to do replacement wise yet, fortunately we have the mighty Vito to be getting on with but i'll get something else i guess...

i'm really excited about the upcoming races, Portimao's usually ok for me, i love the place but i'm looking forward generally, sure good results at Portimao would be great but i can't wait for Valencia, Assen and the rest of them too, i've put Australia well and truly behind me and as i said earlier i'm feeling real good and positive now for the rest of the season, let's keep our fingers crossed and hope for at least a couple of podiums from Portimao and we'll take the rest as they come!!! Right i'm outta here, i'll blog again real soon, i promise!! Shakey #67

Ding ding, round 1!!!!

2010-02-28T07:51:00.003+01:00

Well, lets start this blog by being totally honest, today (race day) was never going to be two race wins starting from 18th on the grid was it.....

Taking a step back to friday though was a different matter, testing down here had gone fantastically well despite losing the last two and a half hours of monday due to bike problems but anyway i felt we were in great shape for the upcoming races. Fridays morning session past without any dramas and for provisional qualifying things were going great, i was P4 so provisional front row but in the last 4 minutes i hit the track to test another rear tyre which should've easily allowed me to improve, the tyre immediately had a bit of chatter but i figured i only had enough time for 1 if not two laps at the most so i thought it'l be fine for those so i pulled the pin, everything was ok until the fast left that builds up speed to the last left one of the most important corners on the circuit, i got on the gas and all was good but as i was lifting up the bike went sideways so violently that immediately i thought oh shit, this is really gonna hurt, mark my words, it did!!!!!

Saturday was a complete disaster, i felt real sore and stiff riding but anyway i felt like i was going real good, that was where the problem was though, i felt about 3 seconds a lap faster but was actually about 2 seconds a lap off my normal race times, bear in mind that my test time was a 1.31.6 on a race tyre yet pole position was a 1.31.2 and that will give you an idea of the kind of pace i had!!!! I actually got knocked out in the 1st superpole having used a qualifying tyre which i was actually 2 10ths slower on than a race tyre and my best time was a 1.32.8, totally crap but like i said that felt like a 1.27!!! I was really struggling to comprehend how fast i'd been and how confident i'd felt before the crash only to find myself wobbling around like i needed L plates!!!!!

Today as i said just didn't go my way at all, in the first race knowing that i'd started from so far back i was a little over keen to make up positions and paid the price by running straight on at the hairpin, i eventually got back on track and got a pretty good rhythm going to catch Neukirchner and Sykes but i eventually finished 14th which i put my hands up for, i was too keen in the early laps and paid the price but roll on race two i thought, totally different mind set, Shakey's back, let's have it!!!

The second race was a little bit more settled, i got a tiny bit held up in the first few laps but eventually i got going ok and was running in 10th, the Johnny Rea came past down the straight and i thought right, there's my target, i could see up front we were catching Crutchlow, Toseland and Corser and i thought ok we started 18th, they started front row, if we catch them for this weekend i'll be happy enough with that, in the end we caught them ok but when we did johnny immediately passed Cal and i got stuck, right i thought, just be patient, there's a good top 10 finish here, with about 2 or 3 laps to go Max Biaggi passed me and i was like b*****ks, that wasn't meant to happen, anyway the four of us got in a right battle but unfortunately i just didn't have the speed to pass Cal, i was more than confident in myself and my rhythm but the problem was i got sucked into their rhythm and that's where it went wrong, Leon Camier passed me and i thought i don't believe this, fortunately i managed to pass him back at turn two but then he flew back passed again towards the end of the lap, i crossed the line P12 which i'm not at all happy about but at the end of the day i think we're back on it, fully, i'm happy with my riding just disappointed with my positions, i ended up battling with guys that will win races this year and i truly believe i'm one of them again now, it could be worse, last year i never finished a single race!!!!

I'd like to say a massive thank you and sorry to my team, i crashed twice this weekend, one massive and one small one this morning, the boys did a good job, i gave them 110% and that's all they ever ask for, they know we will be strong, our time will come, i'm absolutely delighted for Carlos, Genesio (the team owner) and Carlos's side of the garage for his amazing win, he told me after that it was the best race of his life where his bike and everything around him was perfect, like i said i'm made up for them all, i hope that at the next races it's me giving everyone something to cheer about, fingers crossed and full gas, ciao, Shakey #67

An action shot over the top of Lukey heights

Exiting Siberia full gas!!!!

Phillip Island test, day 2

2010-02-24T09:17:00.002+01:00

Bit slow updating this i know but anyway but late than never ha ha!!! Day 2 then, well, i'm both happy and unhappy with the overall results, you see in the morning we worked with one type of tyre size as the track was much cooler due to both overnight rain which actually cut our 1st session down from 2 and a half hours to just an hour plus the weather was much cooler in the morning. It would appear there's going to be a couple of possibilities tyre wise and each will depend heavily on the track temperature, we boxed off the cooler temperature tyre in the first session and had a really really good run going about half a second faster than everyone until right at the very end of the session when Michel Fabrizio pipped me by less than a 10th of a second, the two of us remaining well clear of the rest of the field, things had really gone to plan so i was really looking forward to trying the bigger tyre in the afternoon. All things being equal the afternoon session should've been equally as good however as we are fitting new engines for the actual races the bike i had been using was up to mileage so we had to ride the spare bike, this in itself shouldn't be a problem however we had a problem with the bike that meant i probably completed about 15 laps at the most, probably not even that, it's a bit of a shame really as we still had plenty of work to do and a number of things to test with the different tyre but the guys identified the problem after the session and it was fairly terminal, fortunately we have new engines for the upcoming weekend like i said and at the race weekend everyone will be in the same boat tyre wise so we'll keep our fingers crossed, continue working hard from friday until sunday evening and hope that we come away with two strong finishes, i'm very happy generally with the way all three of our tests have gone and can't wait now to start racing....Shakey #67

An action shot from the test, more to follow soon!!!!

Phillip Island test, day 1

2010-02-21T11:32:00.002+01:00

Hey guys and girls, hope you're well, just thought i'd bring you up to date on the days proceedings here in Australia where i've had my 1st day of testing. The weather here started out a fair bit cooler than it's been for the past couple of days but true to form it definitely warmed up this afternoon!!! This mornings 2 and a half hour session went ok, it was weird in a way because my guys told me 1st thing just go out and do 5 laps, 4 quite steady because you have a new engine then push a little on the last one, ok i thought, no problem, 4 steady laps cruising around taking in the scenery being quite gentle with the bike and then on the final lap i pushed a bit harder, the problem was that i arrived at all the corners much faster so made a right mess of the lap but when i came in i'd gone P2, bloody hell i thought, this is going to be a walk in the park, ha ha!!!

After that things went down hill a little, we had a few things that we needed to try and worked our way though them before ending the session kind of uncomfortable but about half a second off in 6th place so not the end of the world.

For the afternoon session we had a plan of attack, we had some things to confirm set up wise and a few bits and pieces to back to back test before we could start to push but we worked through them no problem and with about half an hour or so of the session remaining we put some new tyres in and with the bike feeling real good now i went P1 where i stayed until the last 5 minutes or so before finally ending the afternoon session P4. Carlos did a fantastic lap and went 0.4 clear of everybody, god knows where that came from but fair play, i'm feeling much happier after this afternoon session as i know full well we're here on standard tyres yet all the factory teams have development stuff so for me to be realistically .3 of a second off the factory guys i'm really pleased. We've got another days riding tomorrow in which i need to test a few more settings although the forecast is looking decidedly dodgy with a 70% chance of rain which to be honest i could do without right now, i think or at least i hope with another half a day to a day we'll be there or thereabouts, the big big bonus for me is that next weekend everyone will be back on the same tyres so we'll see where we're really at then, right, that's enough for tonight, i'm off for a shower then bed, early start tomorrow as we're out on track at 9am....... Take it easy Shakey #67

More proper pics to come as soon as they're available!!!

Here we go!!!!

2010-02-16T20:19:00.002+01:00

Well guys and girls this is it, it seems like just five minutes ago in some ways that we finished riding at the last race in Portimao but whilst the breaks been nice i'm raring to go now!!! Today started with a real early start and a 2 and a half hour drive to Praque airport, that passed without any problems, then we met up with Midlife who brought me down some of my S.I.S energy drink that had been delivered to mums dumped the stuff in our bags then we dumped all our baggage at Gatwick before heading off into London to go to do a recording at the kiss FM studios, the trip there turned into an absolute bloody nightmare and it pretty much worked out that we could of flown from Praque to London and half way back in the time it took us to get from Gatwick to West London, i wasn't impressed i don't mind telling you!!!! Once there i had to do a recording for a promotion that my personal sponsors Express insurance are doing, i don't know if the recording's going onto their website or purely for radio use but you may get to here it if you go onto expressinsurance.co.uk!!!!

Petra and i then got ourselves onto the underground before getting the Gatwick express back to the airport then all we had to do was check in and go right......

Wrong, our Visa's that we had last year expire tomorrow and for some reason the new one's we'd applied for and been granted weren't showing so Emirates couldn't check us in, i immediately got on the phone to my travel agent who said they were done but again Emirates said no....eventually one of their staff called up and got a confirmation number for Petra and i so off we went back to check in and what happened, uh ah, computer says noooooo!!!!

I don't mind admitting that at this point i was starting to get a tiny bit nervous however 10 or 15 minutes later with some kind of government override we finally managed to get it all sorted and got checked in. On a brighter note i'm now sat in the business lounge and just had a lovely sheppards pie and vegetables and finally we can relax, we've got about 40 odd minutes now until we board so for now i'm outta here, i'm gonna do my very best via Twitter and my Blogs to keep you guys and girls 100% up to speed on what's going on so stay tuned ok, Shakey #67!!!

Productive times!!

2010-02-07T17:32:00.003+01:00

Hey guys and girls, just another quick message, everything seems to be going to plan, if you remember i stayed home recently rather than travelling straight back to the UK in order to get some training done, i'm feeling really positive about the year ahead and want the 1st races to start with me in tip top condition so this week i've done 4 good days in the gym, 2 runs and two cycle rides, the 2nd of which yesterday went real well, i managed an average speed on my GPS of 20mph which isn't bad going at all. Today, sunday being the day of rest is cool, i'm glad to have a day off but i can't wait to get cracking again tomorrow morning, i'll be hopefully off cycling first thing then back in the gym in the afternoon, we've only got pretty much 5 days left before we have to get sorted and ready to leave for Australia so it's gonna be another full gas week and away we go!!!

Getting a few more miles in the bank yesterday morning......

Nothing to report!!

2010-02-03T20:09:00.003+01:00

Not a great deal to report to be honest but I thought I’d give you guys a shout just to say hi!! I’m going to be getting my new Vito back again on Friday and as stupid as it sounds I’m actually really excited about it! After the crash in the old one back in November it seems like ages since we’ve had our own van, the new one should now be fully fettled though, I spoke to Midlife today and he said it’s all ready for collection, mind you he also says he thinks there’s going to be a new Vito coming out around October time so we might be needing to do the big upgrade, I’ll be needing plenty of podiums this year just for the van upgrade!! It sounds daft I know but I can’t imagine us not having a van, it’s perfect for just about everything we need, it takes dogs, motocross bikes, shopping, we even brought my Harley down in the old one and that thing’s 2 meters long and weighs about 2 tonnes!!!, all that with leather seats, car like comfort and economy and the things go like a rocket!! Blimey I’ve just read what I’m typing here and I sound like a Mercedes salesman don’t i?!!!

I’ve had a day off of training today which has been nice, two days running and upper body weights have left me a bit achey, I wasn’t gentle on myself considering I’d not been in the gym for three or four weeks but I’m fully recharged again now and can’t wait until the morning, first thing I want to get out cycling or running, I’ve not made my mind up yet, it kind of depends on the weather then in the afternoon I’ll be off to the gym again back on the case.

I’m just going out in a second to meet up with David Knight, the former World Enduro champion, he’s been down in Spain testing and is on his way back up towards Le Harve so we’ll have a catch up, he won his come back race for KTM at the weekend at the Barcelona indoor Enduro so he’ll be happy with himself, other than that there’s nothing to report so for now I’m gonna checkout, I’ll catch up with you guys soon, take it easy #67

The old van, now the new one should look identical!!

Valencia test

2010-01-29T00:57:00.001+01:00

It’s happened again, me and technology, we’ve had a bit of a to do!!! You see it all started a while back when I was looking into options of having video clips up on the website, well, in I go to the Apple store in Bluewater armed with the new camcorder I brought for Christmas and my laptop being unable to get one thing talking to the other, the guy eventually fixed it, downloaded some updates etc and strongly recommended I upgrade to the latest Mac operating system, Snow Leopard, £25 I thought, can’t go wrong!! Typically about two weeks later (literally just before we left for Portimao I decided to load the disk and do the big upgrade) for once everything went fine, fine until I tried to open my photo resizing program that I use to fire pics up on my website and to Twitter, the program s**t itself and said no way Jose, b****ks I thought, (the upgrade version of the program I have is £350!!) so I downloaded a free 3o daytrial version to get me out of trouble and off we went to Portimao, on route there Reg suggested checking the net for something so I said no problem, connected my data stick, turned on the laptop and what happened, it s**t itself again, everytime I put the Vodafone stick anywhere near it the laptop crashed, great, oh well, get to Portimao, go in the press room, call Vodafone and download the latest version right, wrong, some arrogant twat had the audacity to ask if I’d called Vodafone beforehand to let them know I was thinking of getting a new laptop, I’m sure he was on drugs you know, anyway the long and the short of it all is I haven’t been able to keep you up to speed how I intend too so here’s a run down of what’s gone on in the two days we’ve had testing in Valencia.

Day 1, nothing!!!! Did 6 laps on what might as well of been called an ice rink, useless, no good at all so no riding, I did go ten pin bowling with Reg, Leon Camier, his manager and their motorhome driver though which was quite amusing, something even more funny was how anal Leon’s manager was about their hire car, a white 1 series BMW, well, I brought a microphone thing from PC city or whatever it’s called and asked for the car key so that I didn’t have to carry the bag around all evening, Storka (Leon’s manager) reluctantly gave me the key so I went back to the car and thought right, lets move it so I hid it right in another corner out of the way and went back to meet them, when we left a couple of hours later I told the others but not Storka what I’d done and as luck would have it there was a car near on identical to there’s not far from where he originally parked, we wondered across towards it and I saw the key come casually out of his pocket and him hit the unlock button, 1^st time it never worked so he tried again, by now we’re getting closer and it’s still not opening, we get right to the car and with a confused look he says the keys f***ed, with that I burst out laughing and said I’d moved it but he clocked eyes on yet another near identical one so thought that was his, when we got to the 2^nd car and that didn’t open the boys were all wetting themselves, maybe you had to be there but trust me, it was funny!!!!!

Day 2, mega!!! We woke up to a real sharp frost and the crispiest coldest morning you could ever imagine with damp patches everywhere, I was actually desperate to get out riding but there was no way it was going to happen in the morning, eventually we got out in the afternoon and got to work, I really enjoyed myself riding, we took things very step by step and I was delighted to see that the problems I’d suffered at Portimao were identical at Valencia, exactly as I told the team they would be, as I said step by step we worked on the balance of the bike and made big steps in terms of my level of confidence with the bike, I’m not going to say I wish the races were tomorrow as we still have quite a bit of work to do with the electronics but we’re probably about 80-85% now and with two days testing at Philip Island hopefully we’ll be there or thereabouts, it would appear the new Ohlins suspension is pretty sensitive but we seem to have found a pretty good base now, in Australia we’ll have a few more bits and pieces to test too which should be good. In terms of performance I actually topped the time sheets for a large chunk of the day but I think I ended up unofficially 2^nd or 3^rd but only 2 10^th’s of a second off on standard rubber, here’s an indication of my performance, on the same tyres as last years race I lapped 1.3 faster so it’s going in the right direction.

I’m really looking forward now to a solid two or three weeks of training before we head over to Australia, I literally can’t wait to ride my bike again, I’ve got a good team behind me and a cool team mate so it’s all good here on Planet Byrneard right now, talk to you soon, #67!!!

Portimao day 3

2010-01-24T19:46:00.003+01:00

There's really not a great deal to say about yesterday so i thought i'd just skip it and go straight to day three. I've had a really difficult day, i think i told you before that our bike has a lot of potential but unleashing it so far has been very difficult indeed, i'm not kidding when i tell you that three problems, 2 electrical and one suspension have worked hand in hand to make things really hard for me, however step by step my team have worked mega to get to the bottom of the problems, i won't go as far as saying we've totally fixed any of them, in fact quite far from it but we definitely now have a positive direction to follow and with just two or three days off before Valencia i'm even more excited about going to ride there than i was about riding my new bike here for the 1st time!!!! Valencia should in my opinion really show the problems we've been having probably much more than here so that in itself will help us to get to the bottom of the problems quicker. i think once we've got Valencia out of the way we should be in pretty good shape, Valencia for me is almost more important than this test here, i can't wait!!!!!!

The smile's even bigger after finishing P3 today!!!

Carlos and I, i think they use these photos in the programmes...

I'm sure if i keep practicing i'll soon be able to get my knee down!!!

There we go, i've cracked it, ha ha!!!

Quick update!

2010-01-24T15:04:00.006+01:00

Had our first session this morning, it started pretty damp and slippery but dried out ok in the end, we still have a lot of work to do to get the right feeling from the bike but we're definitely working in the right direction, some aspects of the new bike are really good already so we have to just keep chipping away at various bits and pieces to do with the electronics and suspension to find a good balance and then we'll start to push hard for a lap time, we're working hard and it's all good!!

Be alright if i looked where i was going wouldn't I!!!!

Portimao day 1

2010-01-23T11:28:00.003+01:00

Do you know what I don’t believe what’s happened today, you know this is my 3^rd season now with the 1198 Ducati and to be honest I pretty much thought I knew all there is to know about them, boy was I wrong. As you’ll probably know I made my debut today for the Althea Ducati team, I was mega pumped about getting out on the new bikes, we had the chassis and suspension set exactly how I had my 09 bike set here for last October’s races so it was a case of get on, go and go fast right….wrong!!!

This new bike is totally different, sure chassis wise it feels familiar, it fits like an old slipper for me now but that was quite literally the only thing the same, electronics wise it feels so different, it’s like chalk and cheese compared to my 09 bike, you know as a rider you always sit and think do you know what if I had that bike they wouldn’t see me, if you dont believe in yourself then what’s the point, our new bikes I believe are pretty similar to what Xerox had last year, the bikes I was dreaming of riding but I can assure you it’s definitely not a case of simply get on and go, that said though I’m fairly certain that despite ended today P6 we’re literally only just scratching the surface of this new bike, I’m looking even more forward to riding tomorrow now than I was today, we have a host of things to try that should help both lap time and consistency, I’m pumped!!!! The security guard’s asking us to leave the pres centre now so I’ve got to crack on, a domain!!!!!!

Tense times, just about to head out for my first ride!!

Don't stall it now, ha ha ha!!!!

The first action shot i've seen!!

One of the team trucks...

Some pics from the Portimao test!!

2010-01-21T20:09:00.003+01:00

Hey guys and girls here's a few preview pics form here in Portimao, check them out!!!!

The boys hard at work in my side of the box!!

Won't be getting far on this one at the minute, ha ha!!!

My two babies waiting to go out to play!!!

Hopefully the view plenty of people will see of them this year (the rear i mean!!!!)

To top the day off!!!!

2010-01-18T13:37:00.002+01:00

Check out this place we went for a big dinner after the launch, it was down in a cave where they used to produce olive oil!!!

We ate some very good food here!!!

A few pics from the team launch!!

2010-01-18T13:12:00.004+01:00

Here's some pictures for you to see....

Flavio, me, Carlos and team owner Genesio

My guys who will work with me this year

The three of us kitted up!!

The mayor of Fasono, the owner of Unibat (our main sponsor) Genesio and the riders

The dance show, i never even knew this happened as we were getting changed!!!!

The 2nd job of the day, a photo shoot...

2010-01-18T13:04:00.003+01:00

Our 2nd job of the day on Saurday was a casual photo shoot with our bikes, here's a couple of pics of the three of us!!

Autograph session at out team sponsor Bikerstore, a case of mistaken fame!!!!!

2010-01-18T12:36:00.004+01:00

I had a really funny moment on Saturday shortly before arriving for an autograph session at one of the team's sponsors Bikerstore in Bari Italy, we stayed the night before in a real nice hotel and i knew that in the morning we had a few things to do before heading off to another town for the team presentation that evening, well, i was due to meet team owner Genesio Bevilaqua downstairs at 9-30am for breakfast so unlike my normal self i got there 5 minutes early, the lift doors opened into the hotel lobby and there were people everywhere, the place was packed, TV cameras and paparazzi were all over the place, Bloody hell i thought, Genesio's gone big with this launch thing!!! I went straight in for breakfast to get away from everything only to find out that the ex Italian president was in there having breakfast two tables away, for a minute there i thought i was famous, ha ha ha!!!!

Inside the store, Flavio Gentile our teams Italian SBK rider, me and Carlos keeping on the right side of the law!!!!

The aftermath!!

Sneak preview!!!!

2010-01-16T17:04:00.003+01:00

Hey guys and girls, here's a little sneak preview for you, i'm currently over in Italy as it's my teams (Althea Ducati) launch tonight, here's a few crafty i phone pics of the bike and potentially my new helmet design for you to see, i'll upload some proper photos probably tomorrow for you to see properly, but for now, here you go!!!

My new, old baby, this is my heavily updated ex Airwaves BSB title winning bike!!!!

Doesn't it look the absolute nuts, i'm well excited about Portimao next week!!!!

Pretty much my new design for 2010, a few tweaks here and there we'll be rocking!!!

Petra and Zack on the back, this design will change slightly... Zack's mini moto bound!!

The matt white stripes rock!!!

All a bit last minute...

2010-01-13T14:17:00.003+01:00

What an absolute nightmare i had yesterday, i got a call from Midlife saying they needed my new Vito back in order to carry out some work that needs doing on it urgently but due to my schedule in the coming weeks the only day i could bring it back was yesterday, so after receiving his call around 3pm i got sorted, booked a ferry and a flight home and hit the road, that's where it all went downhill, driving up through France i got into some hardcore snow storms, in our car such things aren't a problem but in an unloaded Vito they become a bit of an issue, a few octopus handed attempts at keeping the thing in a straight line made me realise Vito's definitely don't do snow quite like a 4x4!!! All in all i saw a jack knifed lorry, and 3 cars crash, works wonder's for your concentration you know!!!! I finally arrived at Calais at 5-30am this morning only to be told i'd missed my slot, matey in the booth got a proper earful and eventually put me on another ferry.. at 6-45, the retard could've boarded me straight away but we spent too long discussing jack knifed lorries and snow drifts, i was fuming, i finally got to bed at 8-30am this morning and now i'm back up and on the new high speed train to London then onto Stanstead, it ain't easy!!! To top all that off it's my fiances birthday today and she's at home waiting for me to get back!!! It's all go here!!

The three wise monkies!!

2010-01-10T22:53:00.004+01:00

Hey everyone, had a real cool day today, we've been snowboarding, it's literally been perfect conditions as you can see from the photos below, two of my good mates, Proff and Stef (aka Cake Dave) came over and we all went to the mountains, it was my first time on a snowboard in over 5 years but we soon got back into the swing of things, it was Stef's first time snowboarding full stop so he had a steady start but got going ok in the end, like i said it was highly amusing!!!!

The three wise monkies on top of the world!!

What a lovely view....

Proff begged me to say he'd just landed a 90ft jump, trust me, he hadn't!!!!!!

The 1st lift up, all smiles!!!

I'm sorry!!!

2010-01-09T12:02:00.002+01:00

I'm sorry guys and girls but like a dipstick i forgot my log in and password details to upload blogs to you all, with all the dramas we've had over the past few days with travel due to snow it's not exactly been top of my priority's to sort it but done now, i'll get on the case with some proper updates soon, take it easy, Shakey #67

Happy new year!!

2010-01-02T11:38:00.002+01:00

Hey guys and girls, just a bit of a message to say Happy new year, yes i know it's the 2nd already so i'm a bit late but there we go, i hope you all had a good time, we had a really quiet one in England which was nice, now we're just sat relaxing in the Czech Republic, it's -1 outside but the forecast is -12 later, i'm getting cold just typing it let alone feeling it, i'm hoping we're gonna get some more snow so that we can take Zack out on a sledge but we'll see, we've got 5 days over here now so plenty of time to train and relax in equal amounts which will be nice, i'm also hoping to go up to Praque for a look about too whilst we're over which will be cool, talk to you later, Shakey.

Long old day!

2009-12-31T01:16:00.002+01:00

I don't really know if it's the fact i slept crap last night or the fact i've spent the best part of twelve and a bit hours driving up to the UK but bloody hell today seems to have been a long old day!!! You can always tell when you're getting close to the UK though, it starts to rain, then goes real cold followed by a nice dose of fog!!, sat at the Euro Tunnel now and fortunately not got far to go when we get to the other side, off to the Czech Republic friday, i'm really looking forward to that, god i'm tired, i'm outta here, talk to you tomorrow!!

Back on it!

2009-12-28T18:05:00.002+01:00

Had a pretty good day today, got to go out cycling this morning so i'm real happy, it felt good trying to off load Christmas Turkey and sweets sweating mu n**s off pedaling, i'm hopefully going to be going again tomorrow morning then off to the gym tomorrow afternoon, i might start feeling human again then!!! Hope you're all having a good Christmas break, talk to you soon, Shakey.

Top Gear!!

2009-12-27T22:26:00.002+01:00

The last of the chill out days today, Petra's been out running again, i've been out for a cruise on my Harley for half an hour, we've just watched the Bolivia Christmas special of Top Gear, how funny are those three, i need to get on that reasonably priced car challenge thing, that looks like a riot!! Can't wait until tomorrow morning, i'm off cycling, i've got to try to get rid of all the Christmas food, i'd better do some big miles ;-)!!!

The baby sitter!!

2009-12-26T12:04:00.004+01:00

Hey all, hope you're well and not too stuffed on Christmas Turkey!!! We had a lovely Christmas, Zack was made up with life, he's got more toys now than he knows what to do with!! We went for a nice walk up in the mountains yesterday and as you'll see from the picture it was far from a white Christmas for us!!! I've been baby sitting this morning and spent most of my time walking with Zack, he's pretty much nailed the walking thing now but gets so excited when he walks that he starts going too fast and nearly crashes, it's highly amusing, back in the gym this afternoon to work off my Christmas dinner's, i'm looking forward to getting back to normal now, 2 days off totally chilled is more than enough!!! Talk to you soon.

The three of us, the dogs are off causing chaos!!

Me, Zack, the dogs and the blue sky!!!

Merry Christmas!!

2009-12-25T11:43:00.001+01:00

Hey Shakers and Shakettes!!! Just a real quick one to wish you all a merry Christmas and a happy and prosperous new year, all the best for 2010, Shakey #67

Me and DIY.....

2009-12-24T13:25:00.002+01:00

Well, whilst chilling out and winding down for Christmas we had a last few little jobs that we needed to get done before being able to totally relax, we recently had a new bathroom installed and i had 3 towel rails and a toilet roll holder that needed fixing to the tiled walls, now, with my DIY skills being about as competent as a two year old i have to confess i'd been putting these jobs off forever but it caught up with me, with a quick call to my plumber/electrician i thought i had it nailed, "give me a quick hand with this will you" i said, but in short he explained what to do, left me his drill and sort of said you can do it because if the tiles crack i don't want you to moan at me, GREAT, just what i needed to hear....

believe it or not though i fitted all of it perfectly, i'm actually quite proud of myself, however, there was one slight hiccup, the final grub screw to secure the last towel rail dropped out, fell in the bath and i watched in semi slow motion as it rolled up one side, then the other all the time heading towards you guessed it, the poxy plug hole, that was it down it went, i couldn't believe it!! The long and the short of it was i had to go to the shop where we brought the rails etc and buy another one to get the correct screw, i was fuming!!!! All sorted now though and i've even put a big full body size mirror up on the wall this morning, that never went quite to plan either, the walls here are really really thin, i drilled the hole to fit the raw plug and ended up going right through into the wardrobe in the bedroom behind the wall so now i've got to fill and repair that, this DIY lark just never goes to plan for me, i'm sure it someone's way of telling me to just leave it alone!!!!!

Winding down...

2009-12-23T15:42:00.003+01:00

Well, the big christmas wind down has well and truly kicked in here now, having a bit of a lazy day so far, i'm hoping tomorrow's going to be dry as i want to get out cycling again tomorrow, i know the gym's shut for the 24th and 25th so i've got to do something, might have to go for a run if the weather's not so good. It looks like Midlife might have come up trumps on the van front, i think he's found me a new Vito, it's another Dualiner which will have all of my trick stuff from the old one, but this one's only a year old in January. I can't wait to collect it, i think we're going to be over to the UK on New Years eve before heading to Czech on New Years day then finally driving back home in the new van on the 7th or 8th.

Our old Vito, it looks slightly different now, it's got no front end on it!!!

All gone wrong!!!

2009-12-22T16:41:00.002+01:00

Can't believe it, today started out quite nice, i was fully motivated, went out cycling, threw a few steep climbs into the equation which made the ride hard enough then to make matters worse about 15 miles from home it started to rain, charming!!! It's looking proper miserable now, had lunch and off to the gym later, won"t be miserable in there!!!!

Relax, I'm a physio!!!

2009-12-21T14:22:00.002+01:00

Always makes me smile when i go to my Physio, here's the picture on her treatment room door!!!!

She just needs the Welcome sign above this, ha ha

Night watch!!

2009-12-21T11:33:00.002+01:00

Hmmmm, not good, got to be last night and we thought we could hear somebody outside of our house, it stopped for a bit then about 20 minutes later started again, there i was at about 1-30am wondering around outside like a security guard looking for El Banditos!!!!! No one there though so off i went to bed, woke up to a miserable day, nothing at all like yesterday, it's not all bad though, i've booked a session with my physio in an hour or so for a back cracking session followed by a deep muscle tissue massage, off to the gym later this afternoon, every day here's like ground hog day, cycle, run, gym, sleep, run, cycle, gym, sleep, massage, gym........ i'm sure you get the message!!! Right, i'm off, talk to you later.

All grown up!!

2009-12-20T18:04:00.005+01:00

Here's a few pics of one of our cats, suitably named "Divvy" with reason, as a kitten he was a lunatic, now, in the second photo you can see he's all grown up and as for the 3rd photo, well, you make your own mind up!!!

Looked so sweet didn't he, until he woke up!!!

Just checking the web for cat food!!!!

I dare you to put your finger in there!!!! ;-)

What a buzz!!!!

2009-12-20T16:27:00.004+01:00

Here's a few photos for all you adrenalin junkies out there, these photos were taken at a skydive centre in Spain, i'd love to do the course to be able to jump alone, it's a proper rush you get from jumping out of the plane!!!

Here we go, maximum adrenalin coming right up!!!

The big thumbs up, Jumping certainly got them from me!!!!

That's Petra's mum on the left, she jumped too, as did my mum, Helena was keener to do it than me!! the other guy is my instructor Alain.

What obedient dogs, ha ha!!!

2009-12-20T16:05:00.004+01:00

Here's Tyson and Missy this afternoon up in the mountains doing their finest impression of a pair of obedient dogs, the sit didn't last long believe me, weather's much much better today, thankfully!!!!

I've got a feeling!!!

2009-12-19T19:19:00.002+01:00

That's me all done for today training wise, i've just been to the gym for a couple of hours, i had a real good workout today but i've already got that feeling in my body that says, yeah, fair play you did good, you pushed hard but.. you're gonna suffer later and tomorrow morning, it's all good though as i don't train on sundays unless of course I'm racing so i've got a day off now!! 3 degrees outside and the winds still flat out, it feels about -30!!!! Must remember to lock the gate tonight ;-)

Sore loser!!!

2009-12-19T10:51:00.005+01:00

What a nightmare, Petra woke this morning at 8-30 only to see that some clever twat had opened our gates at the front of the house, potentially letting our two dogs out, sure, hurricane Katrina was blowing last night but even she couldn't open the gate by the handle and attach it to the latch that keeps it open, I'm well p***ed off, i think i have a good idea who's done it though as our big dog Tyson and the guys Alsation had words a few weeks ago when his dog went for ours, Tyson well and truly showed it who the daddy was and the guy's been p***ed ever since, fortunately both my dogs were asleep in their house so they never got out, much to our relief!!! Any hopes of repeating yesterday's training program have gone well and truly out of the window today, Katrina's doing her best to blow the house over so i'll not be going cycling today, yesterday was windy enough and today it's about 20 times stronger!!! Off for a full on session in the gym in a bit instead, it's all good fun!!!

Tyson, keeping an eye on things!!!

The Mrs!!!

2009-12-18T20:29:00.005+01:00

Here's a few pictures of my Fiance Petra, she's a model and we've been together now just over four years and have a son together called Zack, as you can see below she shares my passion for bikes!!!!

A work photo from one of her favorite photographers, John Morley.

Petra on her beloved R6, she has a full bike license

She also enjoys riding motocross, we've personalised her bike now with graphics etc, it looks well trick!!

A work photo of her from the year before she gave birth to Zack!! I'm a lucky boy!!

New York 2009!!!

2009-12-18T20:19:00.003+01:00

Here's a few pics from our trip to New York this year, i have to admit i was never that keen to go there but after this trip (on route to Salt lake City) i fell in love with the place, i can't wait for the USA round next year, we're planning going straight to LA, then head to Salt Lake for the race, then fly to NY for another couple of days then back home after!!

On our 2nd day the weather changed, it went from real hot to bloody cold!!!

What a view, on top of the Empire State building!!

Aaaaahhhh, Petra and I having a moment!!!!

The Live link!!!

2009-12-18T16:47:00.002+01:00

No excuses for me now for not keeping you guys and girls up to date with what's happening, the boys at NYTA the people that run and control my website for me have really pulled it out of the bag, we now have a live link to my Twitter account so you can see on the home page of the site all my "Tweets" and now we have this blog too where i intend to upload all sorts of pictures and video, soon there'll also be a proper Gallery on the Shakey.com site where i'll be able to upload personal pics of some of the things i get up to, i really hope you enjoy the new features of the site, talk to you later, Shakey#67

Phase 1 complete!!

2009-12-18T14:15:00.001+01:00

That's phase one of today's training out of the way, a couple of hours out on the push bike, talk about deceptive, my comments this morning of blue sky and sun didn't amount to much, it was bloody freezing!!!!!

Morning all!

2009-12-18T10:41:00.000+01:00

Morning all, I'm happy today, the sun's shinning and the sky's blue, the temperature's pretty low but I'm just off out for a bit of a blast around on my bicycle, nothing to giddy just a couple of hours, then after a bit more work for the website followed by a couple of hours in the gym, today should be far more productive training wise than yesterday!!!!