Kyalami...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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