Quick Blog for you!!!

I've not exactly been up on these Blog things of late I know, choosing to either Blog after each race or keep you guys and girls updated with what's happening on in Planet Shakey via social media sights like Twitter or Facebook, even the latter of those I'm pretty useless with to be fair lol so I thought to myself whilst I'm sat on the train to London I'll fire out a Blog to kill a bit of time!!

We've been having a bit of a rough time of things lately on Plant Shakey, we were due to spend the whole of our break in Spain but we've been having a few dramas then to top things of my wife got a letter confirming an appointment at hospital for a hysterectomy to be performed, I feel real bad for her because over the past few years we've been doing all we could to help her with some (women's) problems she's been suffering with and despite everything it seems the only way to fix her was this operation, typically Petra she did another 10km running race a couple of days before the operation because her doctor had said fitter people tend to recover quicker lol!!!

The operation really knocked her for six and recovery wasn't helped when she caught a urinary infection whilst in the hospital so she's pretty delicate right now, I've taken up a full on daddy day care roll at the moment which has been pretty full on, in fact it's been that full on I have to get my mum over for a few hours most days so I can get out cycling just to have a rest lol!!!!

On the racing front we had a test up at Cadwell park the other week which went really well, obviously, I never got many laps last year due to the shoulder injury but with one full day on track I more than made up for it completing 90 odd laps throughout the day and as anyone of you who's done a track day there will testify it's pretty damn physical around there, I don't mind confessing to aching a little bit the following day, we've known since the beginning of the year that we have a couple of fundamental problems to fix on the Rapid Solicitors Kawasaki but they're really not the kind of thing you can start changing at a race meeting as usually with everything you change there's always something else that needs fixing so things tend to drag on a bit, we DEFINITELY made some good steps though and got a number of chassis parts tested and have a plan going forwards!!!!

Looking ahead now we've got some races coming up that I'm really looking forward to, Knockhill, Snetterton and Brands hatch GP are all tracks I like and hopefully with the improvements we've made we'll be strong at those as well as the rest of the upcoming races, it's definitely once again a case of slowly slowly catchey monkey, we're building up and building up ready for another full on assault at the Showdown, I know the team have some plans for the bike on the run up to that so it's all good.

Don't know about you guys but I watched both Moto GP and the TT races yesterday, it's kind of scary how they set off in 10 seconds intervals at the TT yet the races (both Moto GP & the TT) look similarly spaced out at the finish!! Don't get me wrong, Moto GP is the pinnacle, the guys are all so so fast and absolute legends but close racing.... What about poor old Valentino too, entering the 3rd corner at the race he's probably been looking forward to more than any he has a collision and gets taken out of the game, that was a shame, I was gutted for him, on the flip side, Cal, what a job he did, another podium, fair play, surely something good has to come for him next season, reeling in the factory Honda at the end of the race, the boy's on it!!

As for the TT, what can you say about that, I really like John McGuiness, a lot, he's a top man who lives for that place so I was gutted he only got a third, I don't mean that as in a third's no good, just finishing around there is an achievement but I know he would of wanted to win that race for his idol whom his bike, leathers and helmet commemorated Joey Dunlop, quite fitting in a way that it was Micheal Dunlop that won it! What about Josh too, 127 odd mph average, bloody hell that's motoring on around there in your first attempt, fair play I say!!!!

Right, this Blog has now gone from a train ride to London, 10 minutes or so before a meeting and I'm now finishing on the train on the way back so for now, enough's enough, talk to you all soon, take it easy, Shakey #67

 

Oulton Park Round 3 2013

As per usual I was really looking forward to going racing heading into the Oulton park round, we managed to get a test in there the week before but only on a track/test day and whilst we ticked a couple of boxes it was difficult to get anything too meaningful done, we did however box off a couple of bits and more importantly we made a plan for the start of the following weekend of what we wanted to test and the schedule for testing them, then, what happens, we get there and I can’t help but ask what is going on with BSB rounds this year… its becoming almost customary to loose a session during the weekend, Oulton park never disappointed on that front, it had been dry then literally about 5 or 10 minutes before the session started for us the heavens opened typically just about enough for wets but with a whole weekend of dry weather forecast quite a few of us opted to stay in the pits.

That wet session kind of put the mockers on our plan because as with anything to do with racing it’s never usually a case of bolt something in and it’s immediately better, generally, you’ll put something in, get some positives and negatives, follow a path to try to improve overall then see where you end up, well, basically we had two paths to follow and not much time to follow either so we opted for the safer one.

In the afternoon session I got out and rode the bike pretty much how I finished up at the test then we bolted in a new spec shock and got to work, it was weird in a way because the modifications to the shock were exactly what I’d asked for back at Thruxton one because of my overall feeling from the bike and two because exactly what I explain when I ride is exactly what the guys see on the data, BUT, and it was a pretty big but, it didn’t feel very good at all initially, sure there was potential but it would require some more work, with that in mind we had a big debrief and talked through things with the team and K Tech and set a plan for the following morning.

Immediately on Sunday morning the bike felt much better, the changes the guys had made were real good, not fixed but much better so we decided to continue on that route.

We made a few more changes throughout the session but our pace was good, I think I did 16 or 17 consecutive 1.36 laps and the next person did 4 so things were looking pretty good but it’s never good to start counting your chickens…unless of course you’re my boss lol!!

Qualifying went pretty good, I’ve never been one to worry about pole positions, don’t get me wrong when they come I’m happy but realistically the first row is perfect, we had a plan, Keith my team mate had been struggling a little over the course of the weekend so I towed him around and through all three sessions, he did well to be fair and ended up P4 for the first race, Alex Lowes did an amazing lap for Pole, I take my hat off to him, that boy can chew the screen for a lap, I was really chuffed with my lap time, ¾’s of a second faster than I managed last year, which, I think is a bloody good jump, and was under the official lap record from when Superbikes had full electronics so wasn’t hanging about!!!

For morning warm up we continued refining the bike a tiny bit just checking that we hadn’t compromised tyre life etc in the interests of one fast lap and all seemed fine, I did a 1.35 in warm up over my laps too so it seemed our pace overall may have been improved too. 

I was pretty nervous as usual for the start of the first race, due to the way I ride in practice and qualifying ie on my own and not trying to follow people race one is always where I find out exactly where we’re at, I got a great start as the lights went out and lead into turn one, Alex shot passed into Island so I thought perfect, lets sit here and see what’s going on, Alex was riding good and his pace was strong but it was about the same as my practice pace so I was feeling pretty good and relaxed, I got to see the areas where my bike was strong and where it was weak which was exactly what I expected so that was ok, I followed him for a good few laps and could see that we were just starting to break the guys behind so I started thinking about where on the track I’d be able to make a pass, I semi lined up a few places, to me it seemed I was quite strong in the 1st and last sectors but Alex was real fast in the 2nd sector, one place I thought I might be able to strike was out of the foulstons chicane, over hill top and down towards Hizzy’s, we ran in towards the chicane and I remember looking at the rear exhaust and swingarm of Alex’s bike and then the next thing I knew I was looking at daisies in the grass after a real weird loss of the front, I wasn’t expecting it at all, indeed the data logging showed no difference in speed, line, lean angle, nothing, very strange and very frustrating too, we’d have our work cut out now for race two….

The boys got the bike fixed up in no time, I guess if there’s a place to crash at Oulton you’d go for there or the entrance to the tight left in the middle of Hizzy’s for minimal damage, I’d had the 2nd fastest lap from race 1 for race 2 so lined up 2nd, I got a mega start as the lights went out and lead for a bit, after a few laps Alex passed me but I could see it wasn’t possible for him to get away and felt more than comfortable sat behind him, I have to confess to being pretty steady through the chicane for the first few laps just to be sure lol!!!

As the race wore on I got back in the lead as I could see that the guys behind were right on us, I pushed to maintain the lap times and at one point about 3 laps from the end I got a tiny bit of a gap but as we went into the last lap my board said +.0 again, that lap I tried real hard to do three things, go fast, be protective and make no mistakes, I kept seeing the race from last year when Josh got me at the final turn so I made a real conscious effort to nail druids and stay right down the final straight, I braked as late as I could without risking running too deep, got the bike stopped and turned then fired it out of the turn towards the finish line and managed to hold on for the win, a perfect way to say sorry to my boys for all their hard work in between the races!!!

I was absolutely made up with the win, it made me real happy, I couldn’t envisage anything worse than going into the long summer break on the back of a bad weekend so to pull it out of the bag was good for us as it keeps the momentum going. I’m really hopeful of a test or two in the break in order for us to work some more on the bike, we know exactly what we need to do and hopefully with some decent weather and a decent track with an open pit lane we can properly getting the Kawasaki turned from a good bike to a great one, I feel there’s a lot of untapped potential there and it’s only going to get stronger so roll on those tests and in some ways these 5 weeks too, I can’t wait to go racing again, next time it’s north of the border for Knockhill, should be good!!! 

Take it easy, 
Shakey #67 

Thruxton Round 2 2013

Thruxton, round 2, how much was I looking forward to this one, it’s funny you know because although we only raced literally a few days ago already it’s back in you, that drive, that desire to get back out on the bike, I literally couldn’t wait, obviously the fact that Thruxton is the fastest race of the year and probably one of my favorite tracks in the UK’s pretty cool too and fired the desire even more lol!!!

To be perfectly honest though the weekend didn’t exactly get off to a flying start, we had a bit of a guess at what we’d need from the bike for the first session and with it being wet this would be the first time trying the bike in the wet with the new K Tech suspension.

To be honest my first couple of exits were far from the raging success I’d hoped they’d be, it was brutally obvious that we had lots of work to do on our wet setting, I came in after just a couple of laps and wasn’t even in the top 20, I wasn’t bothered because we had lots to do and I knew it, fortunately my team and K Tech got the issues semi sorted pretty quickly and after a couple of adjustments we were up to the top 3, that in itself boded well though as we still had a fair bit of work to do before I knew I could start pushing.

The afternoon session was nearly dry, the weather couldn’t really make its mind up what it wanted to do and the session started as I said pretty damp in places so I didn’t even bother going out for the first 15 minutes or so, I simply sat and waited for the lap times to come down to a level where things were starting to get sensible then off we went, straight away literally after about two flying laps I went P1 by quite a chunk but instead of doing the in out in out thing I stayed out and just kept doing laps on laps on laps, in fact I only came in because I got an in board and the boys said I would’ve run out of fuel, we made a couple of small changes whilst I was getting fuelled up then I went straight back out, I ended up doing over race distance on the tyres yet my last flying lap was good enough for P5 I think on the timesheet for the session!!!!!

Free practice three on Saturday morning turned into a bit of a non event, in the Supersport session that ended before ours my team mate from last year had gone REALLY fast, faster in fact than anybody including us Superbikes the previous day so we knew the track should be good, we’d made some changes to the bike from the day before and I was really looking forward to getting out there but literally as our session was starting it started to really lightly drizzle, I decided an out lap should be quick enough to be able to push just hard enough for 1 flying lap to try the new settings so I went pretty quick on my out lap then went for it but immediately coming onto the start finish straight the rear let go a bit and my immediate thought was the tyre must still be a little bit cold, that should’ve warmed it up though so I carried on, through turn one it was all cool, up into the complex no problem, through the complex all good but on the exit of the complex 3rd gear I got on the gas and had a BIIIIGGG slide, bearing in mind this was only free practice 3 I kind of semi committed from there on in until the end of the lap but was pretty damn careful at the same time, after crossing the line there was no information on my pit board to say who’d done what so I did a cruise lap as I wasn’t prepared in free practice to fire the bike at the scenery by pushing too hard but fortunately despite the fact I was pretty careful I was still P2 but the most frustrating thing was I couldn’t push hard enough to tell if the changes we’d made to the bike were an improvement or not, whilst the drizzle got worse it never quite got to the point of being worthwhile going out on wets so it was a complete waste of a session, oh well, roll on qualifying…

Well, roll on qualifying indeed, basically rather than wear out my fingertips typing this qualifying never actually happened, basically we had so much rain that the track literally had rivers and BIG puddles running across it so it was deemed too dangerous to ride so the grid for race 1 was determined by the fastest lap times throughout practice effectively placing me 3rd on the grid which I guess was cool enough, I’m gutted we lost the dry session that we so badly needed to catch up with from the morning but one thing we can’t fight is mother nature so we’d have to wait to see what the weather did on race day.

Morning warm ups track conditions looked far from ideal, dry in a sense but plenty of damp patches thrown in the mix, with the session only being 10 minutes long we let the boys go out and I figured I’d just do one or two flying laps to try to get a feel for the changes to the bike then do a practice start and that would be us done, I did just that so from then on in it was just a case once again of waiting to see what mother nature was going to throw at us..
For the start of race 1 the weather looked ok, the track was dry but it kind of felt like things could go horribly wrong at any point with a few very light spits of rain in the air, I got a cracking start as the lights went out and lead through the short run through to turn 1, the good thing was Alex passed me pretty quickly which for me was the ideal scenario after getting humped after leading the race last year then losing out in the final three laps, however pretty damn quickly I found myself at the front but no sooner was that the case it stared spitting pretty hard with rain so the marshalls were displaying the slippery surface flags, perfect….NOT!!! About two or three laps in just to make matters even more fun I started to really suffer with some heavy vibration on the brakes, I thought I’d glazed the pads but that would’ve been almost impossible having already done warm up and a few laps but there was a pretty big issue and it was causing some issues with getting the bike hauled up as you will have probably noticed if you saw how many times I went in too wide to the complex, it wasn’t me making mistakes I just couldn’t stop any faster if I tried!!!

Fortunately the rain eased ever so slightly but just after it did the course car came out closing us all right back up again, this posed a bit of a problem as originally it was Alex and I that had pulled a bit of a gap so I figured it’d be a battle between he and I but after the last course car laps things grouped up again, I tried to ride very precise but my braking was so hit and miss that it was difficult, on the final lap I ran way deep into the complex and Josh passed me, I thought no way, I’m not getting humped again, I sat on his back wheel and got a real good run through the fast Church corner that leads onto the back straight, drafted him for a bit then went passed, Josh though had other ideas, he went back up the outside of me, I let my brakes off slightly then re applied them but the vibration was pretty bad and I struggled to slow up because of it, fortunately though despite running in hot I got the bike stopped, slowed up the middle part of the final chicane to straighten my exit then fired the bike to the line to take my 43rd and record equaling race win, happy days!!!!!

We knew after the first race that we had some work to do I order to improve the bike, there were some key weaknesses for us in the race compared to some of the other bikes so the boys along with K Tech came up with a plan, with the races having such a short turnaround it seemed like about half and hour or so later we were back on the grid, after setting the fastest lap in race one I would start race 2 from pole with my team mate alongside me!!
As the lights went I got a good initial jump but I bogged my engine ever so slightly which put me a tiny bit on the back foot, I managed to get around Keith and decided to have a dig from the word go, I really wanted to win this race and I wanted to win it BIG!!
A few laps passed and just as I was starting to get a bit of a gap the pace car came out, when it went back in the same thing happened again, I got a gap then boom, out it came, the next time, I pulled the pin again, another real good lap, just got going, started to find my rhythm then bugger me the red flag came out, I was almost starting to get a bit wound up!!!, however, I knew what we needed to do for the restart as the changes we’d made in race 2 had improved some things but not helped in others so I rushed back to the pits to give my team the most amount of time to check the data against my comments so that we’d have an even better bike for the restart but it wasn’t until we pulled into pit lane that I got waved straight into the podium area and I found out the race had been declared a result so it was a double win to become the most successful ever rider in terms of race wins in the history of the BSB Championship, a wonderful achievement however, a laurel I don’t intend to rest on!!!


All in all Thruxton was a decent weekend however it’s very obvious that we still have some work to do, I know we’re hoping to get out for a ride somewhere before Oulton in order to work on some of my issues but I already can’t wait to get there and get back racing again, hopefully it’ll be a dry weekend, that would make a pleasant change lol!!!
Sitting down earlier I worked out that Paul Bird has given me motorbikes that have allowed me to take more than half of those 44 BSB victories whilst riding for him so I’d just like to finish up today by saying a massive thank you to both him and the whole of the PBM team, long may the wins continue!!!

Take it easy, Shakey #67 

Brands Hatch Round 1 2013

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

Holy shiiiiitt!!!!!!

Don't know about you guys but I tend to just kind of float along doing one thing or another totally content 99% of the time then there'll come a point when something will happen that kind of jogs your memory or makes you take stock of whatever situation you find yourself in then all of a sudden you're like, oh shit, I didn't do this, I haven't done that, I was meant to call such and such and so on and so on, well, basically I tried a second ago to log into Dropbox to recover some photos form a phone I lost and couldn't log in because of an invalid e mail address so to cut to the point I tried to log into Blogger using the same address and like I just mentioned I realised I hadn't done.... a Blog since Brands hatch, oooopss!!!!
To be perfectly honest with you there's not really been a great deal to report, those of you that follow me on twitter @67shakey or on Facebook 67shakey will know pretty much everything that's been going on anyway.
Obviously the main thing that's happened is that I resigned for the Rapid solicitors PBM Kawasaki BSB team and that's something I'm truly really happy about, it's the first time in my career that I've ridden for the same team two consecutive years and I personally see it as a massive boost in my quest to become the all time most successful BSB rider in history. I had the very fortunate opportunity to have a great guy who spends shit loads of his own money saying to me Shakey, you just tell me what you want to do and whatever you choose I'll back you 100% but please just have a ride on my CRT bike before you make your decision, not easy being me lol!!!! Unfortunately the opportunity to ride the CRT never materialised due to the weather at the Valencia test but both my heart and my head were leaning towards the BSB side of things anyway, after all, I had a good bike, one that we know with another winter of development we can improve quite a bit, a fantastic team and a great competitive championship to race in which every weekend when I line up on the grid I know I'm in with a good shout of at the very least a podium finish and that ladies and gentlemen is what I go racing for, of course I understand that by racing in the UK I'll never achieve my goal of becoming a World Champion but I'd far rather fight for another title in BSB than fight for a point or two in MOTO GP or a top 5 or whatever in WSB, don't get me wrong, I truly believe I could fight for a title in WSB but nowadays in that paddock it's becoming increasingly like MOTO GP where only the top bikes are capable of winning, I mean look no further than probably the greatest rider of all time's last two seasons and that's with a manufacturer who have a remarkable eyebrow raising amount of money to play with.... I rest my case..
Anyway, moving on, last week was the Motorcycle live show up at the NEC in Birmingham, it was a good show, I had a lot of fun and met some nice people which was good, next week we're off to the Czech Republic for a bit, we're off to see the in laws for a few days then they're gonna look after the kids for a few days and I'm taking my with to Praque for a few days to a real nice spa hotel so we can finally totally wind down after the season.
It's been a weird year this, if I'm honest which to me there's no point not being this is the first year ever that I've taken a bit of time out after the season finishes, you could probably count the amount of times I've trained since the season ended on both hands but I've just wanted to rest and heal up a bit, I worked so hard this year getting back to fitness after the shoulder injury and then with the stress and pressure the whole showdown format puts you under I made it, I won and then I stepped back and relaxed, that's not something I'm particularly good at though as I like to keep busy.
I brought myself another Harley recently, a Sportster 48, they're making 2013 models with a Gold metal flake tank on and after getting my championship winning helmet in the same colour and always fancying a 48 anyway I figured now was as good a time as any, not only that my other Harley is down at Shaw speed and custom being tricked up to the absolute max, and I mean the max, in fact they contacted me the other day about the bike going to a bike show in Italy and maybe the London excel show when it's done so its obviously gonna be pretty rude if they're thinking of stuff like that for it, I can't wait but in the mean time if the temp ever gets above what feels constantly like minus 20 then I have the 48 to cruise about on!!
I've got a meeting pretty soon with an ex Olympian who may be helping me with some training ideas for the winter to get me in tip top condition for next season which will be cool, my approach will be the same as this year it's just that I want to make even more effort and cover even more bases, a 4th title would mean the world to me and that's what I'm 110% focused on trying to achieve, come along and enjoy the ride!!! Take it easy guys and girls, lets catch up again before Christmas, Shakey #67

WE ARE THE CHAMPIONS!!!!!!!!!!!!!

It seems that every time I write one of these Blogs for you guys it starts with a sorry for taking so long sentence etc etc so I feel it entirely appropriate to start this one the same lol!!! Sorry it has taken me a week or so to write this but I have to confess I was more than a little fragile all day Monday after Brands it has to be said and to be honest the rest of the week has been a bit of a blur ever since, to be fair though it was for a good reason – I won the 2012 MCE Insurance British Superbike Championship for the third time winning all three races in the final weekend!!!

After the penultimate round a couple of weeks ago at Silverstone I just got away for a bit with my wife Petra and the kids to the Czech Republic and had a fantastic time chilling out for a few days, then though as soon as we got back it was bang on the training ready to be in the best possible shape come Brands Hatch ready for the final Showdown. I completely avoided the track for as long as possible as I’d really chilled out yet I’d really pushed hard training wise and I wanted to spend as much time at home chilled as possible as the weekend ahead was fairly important to be fair!!! Thursday came though and with it a day of filming and media interviews etc which kept me pretty busy and then it was game on!

Friday started a bit iffy as the track was drying out after some rain earlier on so I waited a bit before heading out, bided my time then headed out to just do some laps to bed the brakes in without going too crazy. I followed Josh Brookes my main title rival for a lap or so and he was definitely hanging it out, with the track being wet/damp in places he was being way to brave for a Friday morning for my liking because those kind of conditions are the easiest in the world to fall down in but I didn’t want to risk a stupid crash in the first free practice session so I thought you crack on mate!!! As it was the track pretty much dried out by the end of the session and I finished the session more than comfortably fastest so it was all good!!

The afternoon session was about spot on so the boys in the Rapid Solicitors Kawasaki garage decided to try a few things on the bike that we’d thought about after the August round, we had some ideas that we thought would help suspension wise but with only a 40 minute session when my initial feeling wasn’t quite so good we reverted back and concentrated on the direction we were working in previously. 

We knew qualifying was going to be important and we did a good job in practice so much so that we went faster in the third practice session than we did in the qualifying, however we’d done that good of a job concentrating on being sure we’d be strong over a full race duration that my outright lap time was only good enough for P2 on the grid for race 1. We knew it was going to be three long, hard races and that Josh, Alex (Lowes) and the others would be up there so I went out knowing that I simply had to treat each race like all the others this year and get out there, get amongst it and fight for wins, nine points wasn’t much of a buffer when there were 75 up for grabs!!

In the first race I got a really good start, a really, really good start, probably one of my best this year in fact, I lead and initially started with a pretty steady pace, it wasn’t because I wasn’t trying just that the lap times weren’t that good and because of it my pit board kept saying +0 for what felt like forever, I tried to control things for a bit and got my head down and a gap came so I just concentrated real hard on managing it, then to make things even more tricky it started to drizzle with rain, I thought 'oh no, what next’ so I tried to keep going as it wasn't that bad in the beginning, I knew that we had an 18 lap race and that 2/3rds race distance needed to be covered before the race would be declared a result so I was trying to work out in my head how many more laps we needed to complete so that we wouldn’t have to start again, on the final lap before the red flag it got real bad, I knew I had to get it stopped as it was really slippery and I hoped we’d done enough laps for it to be declared a result and fortunately it was. It was a great result for the Rapid Solicitors Kawasaki team but I knew we needed to do it all again in the final two races on Sunday.

On Sunday I knew mathematically I could win the championship in the second race, I needed to win and Josh had to finish lower than 2nd but hell, it wasn’t going to be an easy one. It was a tough race and it was a bit frustrating to have two safety cars intervene, the second one was worse as it slowed it down a bit too much and the tyres lost a bit of temperature so when I started to get going again the bike felt a bit loose and I thought the last thing I needed was to throw it down the road. I settled down and watched the gap and tried my best to maintain it. Funnily enough before that I’d got into a bit of a pickle because for obvious reasons I have certain names of riders on my board, but then I had another number appear on one line and then I realised it was Barry (Burrell). I knew if Josh was third it would be job done, so I hoped he stayed there but in the end Josh and Michael got ahead of Barry meaning the Championship would go right to the final race. I would have liked to have wrapped the job up in up in that 2^nd race but knew also that the last race was going to be fun for us as baring a disaster.

The final race of the season was amazing. I started 5^th on the grid so 2^nd row which wasn’t ideal but again I got a fantastic start and slotted in behind Josh, he set a real fast pace and following him was absolutely perfect as I just used him as a reference, I was fairly sure that the pace he was doing he wouldn’t be able to maintain right until the end of the race so I just hung in there and enjoyed the ride, I was happy following and to a certain degree I was happy with 2nd but at the same time I knew I wanted to win the championship in style and the red mist came down and that was it, I knew I needed to go for it, I saw my chance on the penultimate lap after seeing Josh starting to lose a bit of grip and that was it, bang straight into the lead. To cross the line and win the race, the championship in front of such an amazing crowd left me speechless for once!!! I am ecstatic. It would be cruel not to have tried for the win as it has been such an incredible season, in those last three or four laps I kept thinking of all the hard work my boys have done and I thought right lets do this!! I was really emotional. I have to thank everyone, the team, my family, the fans for what has been a real rollercoaster season and to the other guys, we have had some great races this year.

Like I’ve said before the final round, I want to become the most successful rider ever in the championship and last weekend I moved a step closer to achieving that goal. All I can say was that it was an incredible feeling and I have to thank everyone for their support, 2 more race wins sees me become the all time most successful BSB rider in history which is cool but whether or not we stay in the championship remains to be seen as my boss is incredibly keen for me to take part in the Moto GP championship so we need to sit down at some point and discuss my future together.


Right now what I desperately need is time to recover from the party, to chill out, take a nice holiday somewhere sunny then see what the next step will be.

Thank you all so much for your support, I’ll keep you posted when we get some news but for now, kick back, relax and enjoy the last few rounds of Moto GP, that’s my plan so lets see where we go from here, take it easy,

Shakey #67

Silverstone..

To say that I arrived at Silverstone fired up is a bit of an understatement, 5 days previous I'd arrived at Assen not really knowing where we were at whatsoever and came away with a 1st and a second place finish, I don't want to keep repeating myself but if you'd said that would be the case the week before I would've laughed at you!!!

Having Monday off after the race to relax and let my achey body chill out a bit was the perfect medicine, then Tuesday Wednesday hard sessions in the gym and the swimming pool had me feeling good and more than ready for the challenge ahead, to make things even more positive I'd already competed in the Silverstone 200 races so I had a bit of time over my rivals there, we meant business!!!!

Let's start with Thursday afternoon, MSV arranged for the 6 title fighters to get to drive around the circuit, the full circuit not the little ones in their Nissan GTR's for 20 odd minutes each which was a cool experience, I really enjoyed my time in the car and it put me in an even better mood for the upcoming weekend!!

Friday morning though and things started to go a bit pear shaped, I literally managed an outlap on my bike when the dash fired some warning lights at me that I hadn't seen before so I had to pull straight in, the guys got to the bottom of the problem but by the time they had some light drizzle came down and pretty much ended everyone's session.

Friday afternoon was where it really went wrong and I mean Really went wrong, obviously having only done an outlap in the previous session we started on the same set of tyres, I did an outlap then started my what I call my build up lap, turn 1, fine, into the next section fast left, fast right, tighter left, tight right all no problem at all but then immediately I changed the final change of direction for the run out onto the back straight and no sooner had I leant left again the rear of the bike snapped round and threw me up in the air, I kind of managed to stay on the bike but with the slide happening so early in the corner I was on top of the thing but heading diagonally towards the tyre wall at a pretty rapid rate of knots, there was no way I was going to A get stopped or B get turned enough so I had to bail out, I actually came off reasonably unscathed, we weren't sure if I'd broken a bone in my hand as it swelled up pretty good but the medics took good care of that but the bike, well, that was a whole different matter, in a match between the tyre wall and the bike it was most definitely tyre wall 1 bike 0...

Saturday morning I got out and was really happy just to manage a flying lap, bearing in mind the boys had done 2.07's the day before my first decent flyer being a 2.10 or something daft wasn't cool at all, nevertheless we worked real hard through the session and continued improving and finally got down to a sensible enough time to end the session well in the top 5, far. From happy but a lot happier than I was at the beginning of the session.

For the first of the qualifying practices I got a few laps tucked in behind Alex Lowes, he was riding real good and dragged me round a whole bunch quicker than I'd been on my own so big thanks to him for that, then it was on to Q2 and finally Q3, I managed by far my quickest time of the weekend in Q3 but unfortunately it was only good enough for P5 for race one.

After the qualifying sessions we decided on a plan to try for the morning warm up session, sure the track temperature would be down but we needed to improve our bike so it was worth trying, the only problem was that upon pre warming the bike before the warm up session the bike developed a problem which ended up being one that the team just couldn't fix in time, they changed absolutely everything over as quick as they could from an electronics point of view and still the problem was there so they had to result to an engine change meaning we completely missed the warm up session and our chance to try the changes we wanted, it was too big a gamble to go straight into the races with the setting We wanted to try so we reverted back to qualifying spec and crossed our fingers.

I had a plan for race 1, not that it was going to be easy but regardless I had a plan and that was to sit on Alex's seat unit for as long as possible, he'd certainly shown everyone a clean pair of heels most of the weekend so I figured it wasn't a bad plan but like I said executing it would be a whole different matter. I got a good start in the race and didn't take long at all to get close to the front, the pace was weird because it was pretty slow so I rode accordingly trying my best to preserve my tyre for the latter stages of the race, I knew that some of the guys would run the harder compound and make that work but we'd had no time at all to do anything with it so we had to run the soft and try to be careful... Those thoughts quite obviously weren't ringing in my ears when having took the lead I ran way too deep into the stadium section and ran off track, what a dick, basically i'd got real good drive off the corner before and having got the lead was keen to try to stretch it a bit so I broke a tiny bit too late got real crossed up, had to let off the brake and then ran real wide and off track dropping myself down to 6th or 7th in the process,I got my ass in gear sharp ish and started picking the guys off again before a last lap battle with Michael Laverty to finally claim 2nd which I was happy enough with, especially as it gave me back the lead in the championship.

For race two we made some small changes to the bike especially to help the rear of the bike which I was struggling with a bit in the latter stages of race 1, it was kind of tricky because in some ways the problems needed opposite soloutions to fix them and kind of fixing one would make the other worse and vice versa but we hoped that overall they would improve the package, we had set the 2nd fastest time in race 1 so we started P2 on the grid, I got a great start and lead into turn 1 and stayed there for a bit, I had a few backwards and forward moments with Michael Laverty and a couple were particularly close, it was a little bit frustrating because Michael was strong in a few places but overall I could lap faster and I was a bit concerned that maintaining a slower pace would enable a load more riders to tag on with the front guys.
Later in the race Alex came through and I figured he might be able to drag me clear of the rest so I sat on his back wheel for a lap or two but the break never happened and in a few places I felt quicker, with about three or four laps to go Alex had a big bobble going onto the back straight and I thought right this is my chance, I've got to try to go now, unfortunately though I had to roll a tiny bit because I was quite close behind him, regardless I got my head down and made a point of glancing quickly at the big tv monitor in the stadium section to check my gap, starting the last lap I knew it was going to be real tight but I thought do the best you can, make no mistakes and see what happens, I could hear a bike which I figured was Alex pretty much the whole lap right up my exhaust pipe but no passes had happened, going into the stadium area for the final time I could hear him right on me so I drifted a tiny bit wide on the exit of the left to block the entry to the following right and thought right I should have this now, going in real tight I was a tiny bit slow entry wise but held a tight ish line, just got on the gas to square off the exit and then Alex appeared underneath me, I thought NOOOOOOOO, I kept on the gas and tried to ride around the outside of him and then squared off the final fast right but I missed out on the win by just 4 1000th's of a second, I was gutted but far happier than the 1st race because this time at least I was in with a good shout of a win, something I had no chance of in race 1!!!!

Looking back on the weekend now I think as a team we did a fantastic job, of course I'll never be happy with 2nd places but after losing so much track time and having a third gear high side two seconds wasn't bad going and it came with the added bonus of taking the lead in the championship, albeit by a measly 9 points, that 2nd race win would've certainly helped that a bit that's for sure!!!

Monday morning we headed straight off to Brno for a few days off, this is about the only place in the world that we actually get to full on relax and escape from everything, I'm really enjoying a few days off now before getting right back on the case training wise in preparation for the Grand Finale at Brands Hatch, that will be here before we know it and I can't wait. Massive thanks to Rapid Solicitors Kawasaki and Paul Bird Motorsport for all their hard work over the weekend and also to all the fans for your support, it means a lot!!Take it easy, Shakey #67