Another well overdue update i know, but, hey better late than never right...?? I thought i'd give you my view on the Valencia weekend and how it went down for me, to be honest, something you'll see me say on here quite often, i really was looking forward to this race, preseason testing went incredibly well despite two days turning into just half a day so i was full on ready to go despite the fact Valencia used to be my WSB equivalent of Mallory park!!
Thursday morning i went out cycling with Cal Crutchlow which was good fun, he's a funny kid and always has some amusing stories to tell, we did 30 miles together outside of the circuit with a few climbs and then finished off with 3 or 4 laps of the circuit, like i said, all good fun!!
Onto more serious riding, Friday morning came as a bit of a shock, as i said the test went well but with the bike set identically the difference in track temperature made it feel a million miles away, we plugged away and worked hard on one set of tyres to be sure we improved the bike step by step rather than just throwing tyres at the job so it was all good.
In the provisional qualifying session that afternoon things got marginally better initially, we continued working on a set of tyres and were making progress but being on the wrong end of the top 10 wasn't what i was hoping for at all, however, towards the end of the session we fired in a set of softer tyres which were to be the same as the ones i'd probably end up racing and immediately went P1, easily, bloody hell i thought, there i was in a flat spin wondering how they were all going so fast and all i needed was to put these spec tyres in and that was it, job done, with about 10 minutes remaining in the session we made a few more changes as the tyres had helped a lot but also brought with them a few other little problems so we ended up slipping to third but hey, i'll take that!!
Saturday morning went really well, we started the session on the same set of tyres of the day before to get some laps on them and then went back up the order a bit with fresh tyres, the bike felt fantastic and i was really happy despite dropping to P4 at the end of the session, bring on Superpole i thought, i'm right up for it......
That to be honest was where it all started to go wrong, for the warm up session prior to Superpole i went out feeling great, we put a new pair of tyres in to basically try a longer run but within two laps it was obvious there was something wrong, the bike had real bad chatter on the rear, no grip and the front tyre felt square, hmm, not what we need, i didn't even bother staying out and came straight in, i explained the problems and the guys fired in another new rear tyre, this was marginally better but i was still having big dramas and was about a second and a half to 2 seconds off what i'd been doing that morning. Within about 3 laps i was back in the box and this time the guys changed the clutch, they could see on the data the problems i was having but we were struggling to get to the bottom of what was causing it, another two or three laps proved the problem was still there but we were running out of time, the guys checked over the bike 100% and were fairly sure the problems were caused by the front tyre, the only trouble was the next time i'd get to try it was the 1st Superpole session.......
I went out fingers crossed thinking right come on Shakey, we can do this, front row front row, i pushed full gas on my flying lap but the lap time was crap, a 1.35.1, i'd done a 34.2 that morning on the same tyres, not great, the following lap i really hung it all out to pull a 34.7, still half a second off what we knew was possible but with that i took the gamble to sit in the box and hope, fortunately i made it through to the next session albeit in last place ;-(
As you can imagine i was more than a little relieved to get through and was desperately hoping that things would improve in the next session when i got to use the 1st of my qualifiers, unfortunately it didn't, i did another 34.8 on race tyres but could only manage a 34.2 (my race tyre lap time form the morning) which left me a very very unhappy 12th, not good.
Morning warm up was pretty steady, i pushed obviously but concentrated really hard on riding relaxed rather than tensing up like i had in Superpole, i was still feeling pretty good about the races although starting from the tail end of the third row was always going to be tricky.
As the lights went out in race 1 i didn't get a very good start at all, too much wheelie and a 2.9 0-60 did me no favours at all, however after a couple of moves i the first few laps i'd got back to where i'd started and noticed that nobody was really getting away, i kept my head down and was on the back wheel of Lanzi and Fabrizio when Michel went down, Lanzi took a real tight entry to turn 6 so i swept out wide to try to get a run on him on the exit then the next thing i know i was on my arse sliding towards the gravel, the most annoying thing about it was that the data showed i was actually 2kph slower when i crashed than the lap before, gutted..
For race two i was determined to make amends, not that my start would show that, another shocker did me no favours at all, to be honest after the normal 1st couple of laps of pushing and shoving it was all over, the red flag came out due to Simon Andrews crash so it was back to the box to do it all over again in an aggregate race, great..
In the restart i never got such a bad start but it was the 1st couple of turns that made the difference, i immediately settled in in about 6th or 7th and things were looking good, i caught and passed Johnny Rea which was good but Leon Haslam had already pulled a couple of seconds on me and despite holding the gap i couldn't catch him back up, on the track i ended up finishing 5th which means my first top 5 of the year but on aggregate i got 8th which i was pretty bummed about.
I'm glad we got things turned around a little by the end of the weekend but this time i really can't help but wonder what might of been had we not have had the problems on Saturday afternoon so i know now we'll go onto Assen feeling good and feeling strong, that rostrum can't be much further away now, i'm gonna be pushing full gas training wise to ensure i'm in tip top condition come the weekend so lets keep our fingers crossed, thank you to all of you for your continued support, our time WILL come, take it easy Shakey #67
Leading the pack of Rea, Toseland, Crutchlow, Guintoli and Smrz, i held em off to the flag!!!
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