That DEFINITELY wasn't in the script!!!

Well i think it's pretty fair to say that most of you will have already read about what happened here in Almeria yesterday, the final session of the day, doing a bit of a longer consistent lap time run i had a BIG off throttle highside very similar to the one i had back at Silverstone in 2013, it's funny, well, far from funny but when you have those kind of crashes that you really weren't expecting you always seem to get more hurt than when you perhaps wind it on taking liberties with no traction control and send yourself to the moon, but, anyway i had a crash and unfortunately it was a big one and even more unfortunately i've broken my left hand which resulted in an operation last night to fix it, long and the short of it is one of my knuckles disappeared down into my hand and broke it, good news is though as there's no point in dwelling on it i was operated on and with some screws and plates (a meccano set lol) it's all been put back together so i'm already on the mend.

So then to the bad news, today i had quite a lot of stuff to get through in order to box off our 2014 ideas, i got literally 95% through all of that hence the steady ish lap times then i went and flicked myself so now all my 2015 work is well and truly on the back burner.

Getting back to the operation fortunately it was performed under local anaesthetic so i didn't feel sick once it was completed but on the same token it's nearly bloody 3-30am and i cant sleep at all, i'm wide awake so god knows what medication they gave me hence the reason for sitting here in bed typing this.

The doctor has said i need a month to heal up and be right which takes me exactly to the first round but i'm planning on heading back to the UK tomorrow now to jump in a hyperbaric chamber and get the bones lasered etc so i'm hoping that'll increase healing time considerably, i've supposedly got to keep this cast on for 2-3 weeks but i'll see what my guy in the UK says and do absolutely everything i possibly can to be ready for the Donington park test in 3 weeks, fingers, well not on my left hand crossed guys and girls, take it easy, Shakey#67 

That was close!!!!!

I've got to say, i'm feeling pretty full of myself right this minute, i'm sat on a flight out to Spain for the next round of testing for this season, it's funny in a way, it literally feels like i never got the chance to go home, i guess in some ways i didn't because no sooner was i back from the last Almeria test we jumped in the car and headed down to our house in Spain for just under 2 weeks, then we got back to the UK late last Friday, i headed pretty much straight up to a Mac Tools function at Silverstone Saturday evening, back home early hours Sunday, spent the day with the kids on Sunday then today, Monday i'm back on a flight to Spain again, why though am i feeling pretty full of myself, well let's just say this trip nearly got off to a very  bad start, about 8-30am i went online to check in for my flight and whilst the website accepted my advanced passenger info etc it wouldn't let me pick a seat or actually check in, simply saying collect at check in desk, well, moving on, i went to said check in desk only to be told by the lady in orange, sorry sir, that flight's overbooked and because you didn't check in online you can't actually fly today, you'll have to be A, re routed or B get the next flight whenever that is, NOT GOOD!!!! Long story short then, after the same conversation with the customer services guy i managed to get myself on the flight despite him also being adamant i couldn't fly too, at best i could only be a reserve if somebody doesn't show, the long and the short of it was after being told "don't worry there could be up to €250 in compensation" i explained that wouldn't go very far towards the probable €15-20,000 my team would want in compensation after booking tests, paying to send trucks and staff etc, as i said, long story short i'm on the flight, it's all good!!!    

This test is going to be pretty interesting for me, whilst we don't have our "full on" 2015 bike as such there's been a lot of hard work done since the lat tests and going straight back to the track where we tried all of the prototype stuff will give us a definite answer and direction going forward, then, on an even more positive note we get to back to back the new stuff at two more tracks, Cartagena and Guadix, the latter from memory being far more like a BSB type of track even though it's probably been about 8 years or so since i was last there!!!

I'm going to try, i promise to update you guys after all three of the tests so for now i'm gonna kick back and look forward to riding tomorrow, talk to you soon, take it easy, Shakey#67

Lucky boy!!!!!!

I guess it's pretty fair to say I'm a pretty lucky boy right now, I mean as it stands, yesterday and today in the first week of February I've just completed my first two day test of 2015, it's not very often in BSB that you get the chance to get out this early in the year but you see the thing is this, far from resting on our laurels after a great 2014 my PBM team have been working incredibly hard back at base to give me a package with which I'll have the best possible chance of defending my title and the work they've been doing needed testing, you see the results of this test gave the guys the feedback they needed in order to go out and get proper parts made, sure, they could have just had the proper bits made at a fairly big expense and hoped they were good but that's not how they roll, instead we rocked up at Almeria with a loads of ideas and hybrid parts to gain the correct information required before doing the time and money consuming bit of getting them made, hence the reason it was so important to get out early in order to give ourselves the required lead times to have the correct parts fabricated ready for the next set of tests.

I was feeling all a bit hard done by the other week when after booking flights, hotels and track time at Aragon alongside the WSB boys the team decided to cancel 3 days before we were due to leave as believe it or not the forecast was snow and cold, it turned out to be exactly the right call though as a couple of the WSB boys never turned a single lap!!

With Almeria booked we flew out Wednesday evening ready to test Thursday/Friday with a whole load of Moto 2 and 3 boys, this was going to be interesting lol!!!

Thursday the weather wasn't overly kind to us to be honest, pretty strong winds and cold temperatures both ambient and track wise limited the number of laps we did however it was great to get out an blow out the cobwebs and as soon as I got going a bit we started working through some of the stuff we needed to try and with Friday's forecast looking slightly better we completed 40 odd laps and ticked a few boxes.

Friday the weather was better, it was still pretty fresh first thing meaning we once again didn't get on track until around 11-30 but with much less wind things very quickly started coming together, I had a number of parts and settings to work for and having been on the Kawasaki now for a while it was really interesting trying new parts and feeling their effect on the bike, we found some stuff that I really think is going to help us this year and have feedback for various people that means they can fabricate parts accordingly, in the end I got pretty close to my best time from last year too despite the far cooler and far greener for want of a better word track conditions so all in all it was a real good test, the other positive was that Stuart my team mate confirmed my feedback when he got to try a few of the options available too.

The great thing now is we have about 3 weeks before we're back out again and from a performance point of view we should be in an even better position by then plus have the new parts or at least some of them to test so now all I have to do is continue training hard and wait for what I'm sure will seem like an eternity before I can get back out to play again, tell you something, I can't wait!!! Take it easy guys and girls and catch up again real soon, Shakey #67 

Bringing you up to speed!!!

I guess right now it would be daft to sit here on route to Penrith and try to say lets do a bit of a catch up Blog shall we, i mean lets be honest, i haven’t Blogged since round 5 which is far from acceptable and where on earth would i start, round 6 i hear you say.. flippin’ hell i struggle to remember what was going on yesterday let alone 5-6 months ago lol so here’s how we’re gonna play it..

As you all know the outcome of the 2014 British Superbike Championship was pretty good for me, however, whilst at the time history was made with me being the 1st person to ever win 4 BSB titles the fact that Kiyo couldn’t race me in those final three races kinds knocked the edge off of things a little, for me personally as well as for plenty of race fans out there, i found it pretty difficult at the time to deal with, i wanted that head to head showdown with Kiyo more than anyone but upon reflection i never asked the guy to crash did i? For sure he was unlucky and so were the fans to a certain degree but i worked so hard all year long, despite all manners of media and journalism criticising me a little at times for my lean spell wins wise mid season reality is when i wasn’t winning i was third at worst apart from one 5th place and 2 crashes so a total of 10 wins and 23 total podiums of which only 3 i think were 3rd’s was far from terrible!!!!

That’s all in the past now though, 2014’s title was special, to me, you may well say why was?, well the way i see it, straight after Brands hatch i was so so busy media wise, going here there and everywhere that by the time i actually got the chance to sit down and reflect on the whole thing i’d almost made my mind up what i wanted to do for 2015 and from that point in i was only looking forwards, not backwards!!!
Quite a lot happened after the season finished regarding opportunities for next season and there really were some exciting things that had me real close to contemplating a change, however it’s my belief that if you’re not 100% certain in a decision then you shouldn’t make it, that and the fact that the PBM team and i have worked together now for the past 3 seasons and taken 2 titles and a very close 2nd place made it a bit of a no brainer in the end so i’m staying at home for another season and absolutely cannot wait to get back out riding again, i know the team and Birdy are super motivated to get the absolute max out of the bike for next season, with other manufacturer’s coming in with all new bikes we’re certainly going to have to work hard but then that’s exactly what this game’s about, team work, the guys working hard, me training hard, testing cleverly, giving the correct feed back and moving forwards together, i’m really looking forward to it.

One thing that i’ve been on with for way too long now is a new website, i’m not using that as an excuse for not Blogging, what i am saying is that there was supposed to be an all new site early on last season and i kept thinking i’ll Blog when the new site’s live, well, the rest is history and now i’m sat here rather embarrassed that it’s taken so long to get that site going but hey ho, hopefully we’re not far off now.

I don’t know how many of you went to the Motorcycle Live show, i went up on the first saturday but had a pretty manic schedule so i never really got the chance to look at anything, a couple of my personal bikes were up there on display which was pretty cool, one of them seems to be spending more time going from show to show than it does getting ridden lol!!!

As we speak i’m sat on a train up to Penrith, i’m off up to see the team and back home again tomorrow, we met up just before Motorcycle Live so it’ll be interesting to see what plans have been made since then going forward.

I’m really looking forwards to getting away soon, a week in the Czech Republic then straight away again after that too, this year for some reason feels like it’s been about the longest one i’ve ever lived lol, i guess at least it was a good one lol, catch up with you soon guys and girls, Shakey #67  

Brands hatch round 5 2014

To say i was looking forward to getting to Brands hatch for round 5 of the championship is a bit of an understatement, ironically i’d spent a bit of time there on the run up to the event doing an MSV track day on the monday then starting the 241 mile bicycle ride i did with a lap of Brands the tuesday before the event!!

I have to confess to having a bit of a secret about going to the GP circuit for this round, there was a lap time that i’d set myself as a target for the weekend, i never mentioned it to anyone and as i’ve said a million times before i’m not overly fussed about Pole Position’s but the lap time i had in my head, with the new 17” Pirelli tyres i thought would be doable..

I also have a confession, for no unknown reason whatsoever despite the fact we had our better engine in my bike felt like a ZX3 not a ZX10, there was no reason, it just didn’t seem to pull at all, i did 3 or 4 flying laps in the 1.28’s CONSIDERABLY off of my target time and pulled straight back in to the pits to say to the boys what on earth is up with this thing, they checked all the data and couldn’t really see anything and straight away i thought bloody hell this is gonna be a long weekend then!!!

I ended that session in 2nd which was ok but i was far from happy overall with our performance..

The boys did some work after studying the rest of the data from the 1st session and we improved marginally for free practice 2 to the tune of half a second a lap but again, power or the feeling of a massive lack of it was doing me no favours whatsoever..

Overnight the boys made some more changes including the engine but the final free practice session was wet to start then semi dried up, i did a few laps but as it got less and less wet i saw little or no point in destroying a pair of wets so i sat in the box and watched the rest of the session as the boys were still nearly 3 seconds a lap off the pace even right at the end of the session.

Obviously the mornings condition’s never gave us the chance to continue to improve the bike so we ended up doing just that throughout the qualifying sessions, i ended Q1 safe enough around a quarter of a second off where we needed to be but i was trying to fix the bike rather than driving myself mad about a lap time, Q2 again we never really had anything and things weren’t looking especially good, i just couldn’t find the feeling i was looking for from the bike and was really struggling still to push harder, we got through to Q3 though so i had to try to make that count regardless!!!!!!

I completely and utterly threw caution to the wind in Q3, i pushed to my absolute max and somehow managed to do enough to take Pole Position,don’t even bother questioning how because i don’t really know myself, i was far from expecting it i can assure you and as for my secret lap time, well, no where near it, to be fair everyone’s including my Pole time had been pretty crap all weekend which was strange, sure the ambient and the track temperature were high but blimey, i fell well over a second short of my target time, very strange…

We made some more changes in overnight ready for morning warm up and got out with a plan of banging in as many laps as possible in the 15 minutes in order to get a feel for what the bike was going to be like but bearing in mind the slightly cooler morning temperatures we went out on the harder rear tyre, after just a few laps though i decided to come in and try the softer option too as i figured covering all bases at this point was critical, we were far from happy really so needed to make the best of whatever was thrown at us, i ended the session 4th and a quarter of a second off so i knew we’d be there or thereabouts we’d just have to wait to see what mother nature had in store for us..

Race one at least ended up being dry, dry but much cooler than the first day which we figured made the harder rear tyre the way forward, i got a good start and lead initially, i could see and hear James Ellison was right on my tail though and figured there was zero point in trying to drop the pack but giving it 100% as i simply wasn’t going to get away, after about 12 laps though a challenge came from elsewhere, Kiyo came passed, initially i thought i must have been sleeping or something because he came past me so fast on the brakes into Paddock that i thought there was no way he’d get it stopped but he did, we ended up having a great battle over the remaining fee laps and i had a good feeling that although he’d passed me i thought i had enough to pass him back before the last turn then it’d be a drag race to the line, i got a great run on him through and out of Stirlings the penultimate corner but he blocked ever so slightly my run on the exit causing me to roll the throttle a millimetre or so, i knew the pass was on but that roll cast a tiny bit of doubt, i got alongside him approaching Clearways but it would’ve been a massive lunge rather than a clean pass due to the roll so i turned tight and drove as hard as i could to the line but Kiyo out dragged me and beat me by a tenth of a second so i was a bit gutted but a 2nd’s 20 points and 3 podium credits so no massive drama really..

We sat down after the race to go through the data to try to formulate a plan for race two after learning what we’d learnt during race one then i left the guys to go for my usual lunch, power nap and chill out before race 2, the weather was closing in thick and fast though so we were desperately hoping it would remain dry, having got the fastest lap in race one i was once again on Pole Position and i can assure you the view up towards turn one was like the scene out of a film set, angry looking big black clouds everywhere, it didn’t look pretty at all!!!

As the lights went out i once again got a great start, it was almost as if we all just wanted to get the race done and were in a real hurry because of it!!, James Ellison came past and lead for a lap or two but his pace was comfortable to follow so i figured i’d give it a few laps there, keep a good close eye on the weather, hope we made at least 2/3rds race distance in the mean time then get back to the front in case the race got stopped but that all went to pieces when James ran real hot into Westfield, he missed the apex by about a metre and i thought this is a good chance to outdrive  him down the hill which i focused on, i noticed way out wide though he was still way out wide then as i was getting the run on him on the inside i thought uh oh, he’s gonna run out of track.. the next thing i know he went down big time but immediately his bike dug in and started bouncing, now at that point it has to be said you make a split second decision because that’s all you've got and if you get lucky you avoid that bouncing bike and if you get unlucky, well cast your minds back to 2006 with Tom Sykes and the late Karl Bomber Harris, i made my choice and it looked initially like it was wrong, in what seemed like slow motion i thought oh nooooooo, this is gonna be massive, James’s bike flicked up, hit my bike and smashed my fingers but unbelievably and through far more luck than judgement i stayed on the bike and continued on my way, shortly after however the race was red flagged, mother nature was determined to play her part wasn’t she!!!!

We had a good shower of rain after the race was stopped, it looked like lots more would be coming too, we had to restart the final start with wet settings, for the first time all weekend i actually hoped to not lead into turn one and have to lead in the properly sketchy conditions but as the lights we out that’s exactly what happened, i lead for a bit then a few guys came past, Kiyo being one of them so i kept pushing and eventually passed him back, Josh Waters came through and looked on rails so i thought i’m not even gonna bother trying to chase you lol, then i got involved in a bit of a battle with Richard Cooper and Keith Farmer, the thing was those two at the time were battling for a podium they’d never had and were knocking each other wide all over the places, i actually rode there thinking blimey you two keep this up and i’ll have an easy second, eventually however, Tommy Bridewell past me and i ended up crossing the finish line in 5th, sure it wasn’t a podium credit finish but i beat my main rivals and stayed upright, exactly what we needed.

Coming away from my home race having not won was a bit of a bitter pill to swallow but at the end of the day i got beaten by a 10th of a second in the first race ad was feeling good for the 2nd race, unfortunately that ended up getting stopped and in the iffy conditions my results over the two races meant i accumulated the most points over the course of the weekend and was awarded with the Monster Energy King of Brands trophy which i’m really chuffed with!!! Another track i love coming up next, the wickedly fast tarmac motocross track that is Thruxton, i can’t wait, hope to see some of you guys there, take it easy, Shakey #67 

Knockhill round 4 2014!!

Well didn't round 4 start well, Knockhill it's fair to say is a fair old way from from Kent but fortunately for me my team boss Birdy booked me a private plane to fly me up from my local airfield, that definitely made the trip a bit easier lol!!

I have to say I was really looking forward to racing north of the border again, last year the track was real good for us with a double win and whilst you can never take anything for granted I was certainly hoping for more of the same this weekend.

The strange thing was that whilst I got straight up to speed and was lapping pretty flipping fast immediately I couldn't seem to get comfortable on the bike, I seemed to be struggling a bit with feeling for the front tyre, I wasn't panicking as we as I said were fast and ended the session 1st or 2nd so I figured we'd look over the data and get things sorted for free practice 2 later that afternoon..

Little did I know this feeling issue I was having was somewhat more terminal than I'd anticipated, we tried some things to fix it and ran in to various other problems but at the same time we were under my lap record pace and lapping so consistently it wasn't even funny, things were, how should I say, looking very well on the outside but feeling not very good at all on the inside..

After a night to pore through all the data we'd gathered throughout the first days practice we went into free practice three hopeful of a cure for my issues however, and trust me this is going to start sounding like a broken record, whilst we fixed some parts we made others worse, for some unknown reason we just couldn't find a setting that would let me push the bike, sure I was giving 100% but it was 100% as hard as the bike wanted to go which I frustratingly felt was only about 80 odd % as hard as I felt I could go if we got things sorted..

Going into qualifying we found ourselves still chasing a set up that would give me the confidence to push as hard as i knew i could, we’d be thinking we’d sussed it then after a couple of laps realise actually we hadn’t, it was bizarre to say the least as like i mentioned before we were going fast, just not happy doing so!!

For the final qualifying i was hopeful of an all out attack, i knew what lap time i thought i’d need to do in order to fight for the front row and to be honest a big part of me was surprised i hadn’t already achieved it but regardless with the feeling i had i knew i’d need to dig deep, as we headed out for the final session mother nature had a bit of a sense of humour failure and decided now would be a good time to throw a bit of rain our way, i pushed on as much as i dare and came round to see a lap time WELL off where i knew i’d need to be, i never actually checked my position but i couldn’t help but think there’s only 10 of us out here, do i need to be firing it at the scenery for the sake of a row or two… after another semi steady lap to try to establish what was going on the rain stopped and it was time to dig, i pushed hard and did a few decent laps but my team mate followed me and done a time to go faster but fortunately i kept pushing and got a better time to end the session front row in P3, that’s absolutely fine by me i thought to myself riding back in to the collecting area!!!!

After going through all the data from qualifying and explaining what i was looking for the boys and i spent quite a while going through the data searching for an answer, the problem was that all the changes we were making were not big at all but were having such big effects on the way the bike was working… It’s definitely a little window that my baby works in that’s for sure!!!

Morning warm up was pretty cool temperature wise, we tried the bike with a different setting again then during the session i came in to try to modify it further, all things considered my rhythm was real strong despite the fact we used old tyres so while things weren't perfect we went with the settings fro race 1.

Knowing how many years i’ve been racing now i can’t believe i made such a rookie mistake during the start of race one, talking to myself waiting for the lights i was like “come on Shakester, we need this start” but looking up i could’ve sworn the was a problem with the lights, they were taking ages to come on, i panicked a little and looked at the starter Anabelle then noticed a set of lights on her hut just over Josh’s shoulder, as i clocked the lights they went out and i totally blew the start then got a bit ruffed up in the first few corners dropping me down to 5th or 6th, i was so angry with myself as i knew i’d need to be right at the sharp end to have a chance to fight, it took me quite a few laps to get through to 2nd and once i did i pushed hard to try to bridge the gap that Kiyo had already built at the front but all i could do was match him but he was 2 seconds up the track and the harder i tried the more problems i was having with the front of the bike, so many times i felt like i was going down but stayed on, eventually i took a 2nd which is far from a bad result but i was annoyed with myself for letting the win go away, one consolidation was that i had the fastest lap in race 2 so i’d start from Pole position for race 2…

We once again sat and had a long chat after the race about how to make the bike better as i knew there was no point in going with what we had again, the boys came up with a plan and before we knew it we were lining up for race 2, i wouldn’t be making a mistake this time off the start, that’s for sure lol!!!!

As the lights went out i got a great start and lead from the word go, let me tell you 30 laps around any track is almost enough to make you dizzy but when it’s 30 laps around a track as technically demanding as Knockhill it’s even worse.. the place just grinds you down as there’s literally not a seconds rest around there, nonetheless i kept my head down and pushed as hard as i could the whole race and despite a pass from Kiyo whom i managed to re pass a lap or so later it was 30 long laps leading but the right result at the end, i.e. a win so i was chuffed to bits with that, i think we learnt a lot as a team that weekend, we struggled a lot more than our results showed so to come away with a 2nd and a win was unreal, i was that happy i even brought Michael Rutter and Stuart Higgs a beer in the airport that evening lol!!!

Anyway, now it was onwards and upwards, well downwards depending on how you look at it to my home track, brands hatch, i can’t wait!!!

Snetterton round 3 2014

So then here we are back racing again, finally!!!, crikey it seems like a bloody long time ago since Oulton park doesn’t it??, so then, bringing you up to speed, as much as i would have rather carried on racing after the great start to this season i’ve actually really enjoyed the time off, we went over to Czech Republic for a week and also had a couple of weeks over in Spain where i managed to get plenty of cycling in so now we’re back, arrived here at Snetterton and feeling fresh, fit and raring to go!!!!

The weather it has to be said was absolutely perfect for the first free practice session, lovely and warm and not a lot of wind, we had a tiny problem with the bike initially but after just one flying lap i went P1 before pulling straight in to resolve the issue, as the session went on we got faster and faster and at one point i had a clear 1 second advantage, we tried a couple of things with the bike towards the end of the session but they never really worked so we just used the 1 set of tyres but still finished nearly 4 10ths up on the rest so it was a good start!!!   

For the afternoon session we had a bit of a plan to work through, there was the other rear tyre option that we had to get some laps on as well as a few little chassis changes that we wanted to test too, i got straight out and had a bit of traffic and a few guys looking for sneaky tows which meant i actually did 3 or 4 laps before getting going but still when i finally got some clear track i managed a pretty decent lap time, i stuck at it and reeled off a number of laps to check the rear tyre but it became apparent that we still needed to work on our corner entry as with the rear i was testing the feeling was exactly the same as the other, after maybe 10 laps or so i came in to try to find a cure for my problems, at this point i was just under 1 second clear of the rest of the pack, i knew time was counting down and that soon pretty much all the others would be fitting new tyres and going for lap times but it was really important for me to test the changes we’d made with the same tyres so that we didn’t get a false indication, the good news was though that when i went back out the guys had certainly made a good step with the bike, it wasn’t completely fixed but it was a good chunk better and i really enjoyed riding the bike for the first time all weekend, in fact the changes were that good that with over race distance on the tyres i went just 0.1 second a lap slower than my best from the session so hopefully that’d bode well for the races on sunday!!!!

Saturday morning we had one more free practice session which again went well, we were trying to be sure that whatever the conditions track temperature wise we had a bike that we knew we had a good rhythm on, it’s funny in a way because we always get two different types of rear tyre an SC0 and an SC1, 0 being the softer of the two, basically the 1 works well when the track’s cooler and works well up to  a certain track temperature then there’s a cross over point where the 1’s getting to it’s upper limit and the 0 to it’s lower limit then obviously the warmer the track gets generally the better the 0 works but that said the characteristics of the two tyres are different so the way you set the bike for them can differ too!!

Going into qualifying, whilst i was confident of a good lap time i wasn’t sure what the pace would be, i started Qualifying practice 1 on the 1 rear tyre and set a lap time more than good enough to go through to QP2, then in QP2 i used a 0 rear to see the difference, again, i went through to QP3 and with a new pair of tyres i went for it and pulled off a pretty decent lap to go Pole position, to be honest and you may think i’m lying i never care for Pole position’s, what’s the point? races are over 16-30 odd laps depending on the circuit so what’s the point in only being fast for 1 lap lol!!! When my lap time popped up on my dash i was absolutely chuffed to bits and to be honest if that time had of only got me 2nd or 3rd i’d be happy with it, the fact it put me half a second clear of the rest, well, that was just a nice little bonus!!!!!

For morning warm up we had some new brake disc and pads to bed in and after a couple of steady laps to start off with i got going pretty good on a pair of used tyres, we knew we had decent race pace so it was now pretty much just a case of sitting back and waiting to see what the track temperature would do and choose a rear tyre accordingly.

So with track temperature kinda falling right in the middle of the crossover point i spoke about earlier but the weather not looking too much like the sun was about to beat down on us in the imminent future we decided to go with the harder of the two rear ryes, as the lights went out i got a great start and lead immediately but very shortly after a course car came out due to a couple off accidents, I tried as hard as it's possible to keep some heat in the tyres as I knew when the car went in I had to try to make an escape and try to catch the boys napping, I got a good run when the car went in and pushed on a bit initially for a few laps which got me a bit of a gap but then in the interest of not rooting my rear tyre I backed it right off and tried really hard not to use any tyre at all, the only trouble was that my pace dropped just a couple of tenths or so too much in doing so and soon the boys were back on me, I figured at this point there was no point in panicking and trying to up my pace as potentially I'd risk having nothing left for the last couple of laps so I kept things pretty chilled until a couple of laps or so from the end when I got my head down hard again and got a small gap to take the win, I was made up with it even though I figured race two would be harder this was at least one out of the way, it also gave me the perfect chance to dedicate it to two great guys that we lost recently, Karl Harris and Simon Andrews, that one was for you boys!!

After a few small changes it seemed like no time at all before we were lining up on the grid again, my crew chief said to me "look, you've got this, you know the pace you can do, keep it under or around that and I reckon you'll build a buffer and be able to manage it"... Hmmm I thought, ok, let's give it a go!!

As the lights went out I got another decent start, slotted in and settled down, go to the front then started to push to my pace, once again my pace built me a small buffer but things were pretty tight at the front, I once again used my secret weapon which was the big TV monitor on the exit of the final turn to suss out how close the guys were to me and how hard to push accordingly and it seemed to be working a treat, my plan was to once again have a big dig for the final four or five laps to try to break the bunch and with about 3 to go it started to build then the next lap it was at like 3 seconds or something, blimey I thought, I didn't think I was going that fast!! Anyway the final couple of laps past and I crossed the line to take win number two, I was absolutely chuffed to bits to do the double, it was exactly what we needed and a great job by the whole team to get us there..

We knew that it was or is should I say way too early to be counting our chickens and any questions right now about Showdowns or championships seems miles and miles away but we were definitely on the right track, for now I just want to concentrate as hard as possible on racking up podium credits, ask me my aim at any race meeting and it'll be the same, obvious as it may sound it's to win but more importantly it's to rack up as many podium credits as possible because let's face it, it doesn't matter should we make it through to the showdown if we go there with a 200 point lead in the championship it means nothing if I have a 10 point podium credit lead as that's all we'll carry through, with that in mind it's head down bum up and maximum effort to keep them credits coming, let's hope we can rack up a good few more when we go north of the border in a couple of weekends time!!!!

Take it easy till then guys and girls, Shakey #67