I don’t think it will really come as too much of a surprise when I tell you that we knew we were going to be a little bit up against it at Monza, don’t take this comment the wrong way, you could think to yourselves what on earth is he on about Carlos has won a race and had a few podiums this year which is indeed true however when it comes to top speed we’re a fair way off of the fast bikes, i.e. the four cylinder bikes and Monza is basically WSB’s version of Snetterton back in BSB and trying to win there with up to 18kph down on the quick bikes wouldn’t happen either, here’s a bit of food for thought, from the exit of the last turn to the end of the start finish straight we were losing just under half a second per lap!!!!!!
It was really important at Monza to remain 110% positive and push to the maximum from the word go because if we were ever gonna have to work somewhere this would be the place, I arrived feeling optimistic and went out in Friday free practice revved right up, to be honest the bike setting wise felt a little bit off in terms of balance and wasn’ t letting me push too hard, certainly nowhere near as hard as I knew we could go but immediately we got to work on improving things, quite early in the session I had a bit of a technical drama, I was flat out in 5th approaching my braking marker for the Parabolica turn, hit the brakes, back shifted and all of a sudden things didn’t sound or feel right so I had to run straight on, the problem was that normally I would go back to 2nd and us that engine braking to pull the bike into the turn, well, you don’t get engine braking with the clutch in so I went flying straight on, everything was going fine and I was pretty much sure I had it under control but I hit the wet grass just before the gravel whilst trying my hardest to get stopped and that threw the bike sideways then in the gravel it kind of gripped and to cut a long story short I dropped the bike at about 20 mph to have probably the most pain free crash I’ve ever had!! The worst thing about it was the scooter marshal who’s job it was couldn’t find the key to the gate to get me back so I was stuck for what seemed like ages, he had a big four stroke scooter maybe a 250 or something and got on the back of me to get back to the paddock, I was so revved up at the delay that I nearly lost the poor guy off the back of his own scooter on route back!!!! I got back out on the spare bike and we continued working although that bike had a fundamentally different setting that we couldn’t change back in time we knew the direction we needed to head in, I felt more than confident that there was loads of time to come from both me and the bike but nonetheless 17th and 18th for Carlos and I wasn’t the norm….
Things for us in provisional qualifying improved a little, we were down to one bike because of the problem from the first session and the fact that the track started out nearly wet but not wet enough for wets meant the bike we were using was set up wet, in terms of lap time we found a fair bit and improved the feeling from the bike but even so things weren’t progressing at the rate they needed to be and everybody else had found at least the same amount if not more, at one point in the damp conditions I was up to 6th or 7th and feeling much happier but I think as the track gradually became nearly full dry I slipped back to 14th, this time though I was more than positive though as on a dry track with a wet setting I’d improved a fair chunk lap time wise and I was certain that the work we’d be doing over night with the setting of the bike would help me to make a big step for Saturday free practice.
I was right about the feeling from the bike on Saturday, I immediately felt much happier and knocked about a second and a half off of my time from the day before, of course as always that in turn brings on a whole new bunch of problems to overcome and this time it was the front suspension that was the limit as braking as deep and as late as I needed to in order to claw back more valuable 10th’s kept sending the bike to sideways so I was having to release the brakes a little then re apply them which meant I kept missing my apex’s.
Qualifying and Superpole didn’t go at all to plan, Petra left my usual two dry helmets on my stand in the garage and said in jest don’t use one of them until the final 8, bloody hell, no pressure then eh, I don’t think we’ll be using the last one!! A bit dismissive sounding I know but that was what we were up against, in the end I only managed 15th place in Superpole which I was pretty disappointed about as I was hoping for a top ten, in the first two sessions there were plenty of guys being dicks and holding others up through the Ascari chicane which I felt was pretty out of order, I got messed up once big time and once not quite so bad, it’s obvious why they do it but bloody annoying at the same time.
For morning warm up we found ourselves trying a few different things with the bike and it felt good, I felt much happier on the brakes so generally it was all good, we had to use a different type of rear tyre to the one we’d be racing, one that was a harder compound and with the cool conditions it wasn’t good so the guys put in a used version of the one from the day before and I went back out and got going much better again so I was feeling happier about the races now.
As the lights went out for the first race I got a sensible ish start and as we stormed down towards the new layout chicane things were looking ok, I got up the inside of a couple of people and tried to follow Haga through, the race settled down really quickly to be honest but without me being nowhere near as close to the front group as I would’ve hoped, I was racing for a bit with Max Neuckichrner and Carlos and finally ended up in a bit of a battle with Luca Scassa, he and I passing and re passing each other didn’t really do us any favours to be honest as Max and Carlos came back towards us, on the last lap Max passed me down the back straight and there really wasn’t anything I could do about it so that was that P13, not great.
For race two we changed a couple of little things with the bike to help in places where I felt I was struggling in race 1 but not too much, to be honest the only thing that was going to make a difference to the result was a much better run through the first chicane to grab myself more places, this time I got a bit of a better start and was pretty much up alongside JT when it all started to go wrong as we all braked I saw James run out of room and clip the back of somebody then all hell broke loose, when Ruben got skittled turning into the first part of the chicane right in front of me I backed off a little as I thought I was bang on target for getting collected by his bike, with all the carnage I was convinced the race would be stopped anyway but then on the exit of the chicane everyone just went for it and the race carried on which left me slightly trailing behind, nonetheless I pressed on as hard as I could, again got in a bit of a battle with Max and Carlos then set about reeling in Scassa again, with about 8 laps to go Smrz passed me down the back straight and I thought hold on a minute, how on earth did that happen, his bike so I’m led to believe perhaps isn’t quite the same spec as mine but bloody hell it ain’t slow!!!!, I tagged onto the back of him and he towed us to the back of Scassa, with the three of us running together Smrz did the same to Scassa as he had to me down the back straight but by now there was only 1 lap to go, I lined Luca up for a pass into Ascari, and just preyed that I’d get my bike stopped in time, he braked and then immediately I did, initially I thought nooooooo no no no, I’ve blown it and gone in too deep but I managed to make the entrance and held him off until the line to take P9, to be honest it felt like a rostrum getting into the top 10, as you can probably imagine it’s difficult, in fact near on impossible to get worked up and excited by a 9th place but for what it was worth I was almost happy!!
I’m very hopeful now that our bad track is now out of the way, as I said at the start this was always going to be our bogey track and it sure was, I stayed 100% positive all weekend though and worked hard with my guys to arrive at the races in the best shape possible, sure 13th and 9th is a total disaster by any standards but if you only knew how hard I had to work for them, well, I guess you’d feel semi the same as me. It’s on now to Kyalami, last year the Xerox bikes smoked everybody there, lets hope we can finally get this year turned around and pick up some decent results from here on in, I want some Champagne man!!!!!!! Thanks to everybody for your continued support, here’s hoping we’re going to have something to properly cheer about real soon, Shakey #67
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