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
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