I’ve also told you that Kiyo and I have an uncannily similar set up which has helped us work through things quicker throughout winter testing, well this test was no different, as it stands we’re both looking for exactly the same thing fromour bikes and with two different things needing to be tested rather than both having a stab at both Kiyo did some work on engine braking whilst I did throttle connection/power delivery, throughout the day we both made various changes to find a good setting and then I endedup using Kiyo’s engine braking setting and he used my throttle, 2 good steps forward and two things that we hoped and crossed our fingers would transfer across well set up wise for the upcoming 3rd round of the championship at Croft.
I have to admit that I wasn’t especially looking forward to Croft, I’ve never really had that much luck there what with crashes and bikes getting stolen etc and I’ve never really gone that well there full stop, I was running 3rd there in 2008 which was all I needed to do to take the title and then Tom Sykes rammed into me at the final hairpin which cost me the championship that day, that said, although the HM Plant team struggled there a littlelast year my engineer explained the reasons why and generally their results there have been strong, not only that it’s HM Plant’s local race, not HM Plant as in the team’s base I mean as in the race closest to the sponsor themselves, pressure’s on then ha ha ha!!!
Croft is a funny old place set up wise,you can make your bike real good in the slower sections but struggle big time in the fast part, you can makeit mega in the fast part but then have it horrendous over the bumps of which there’s a fair few at Croft,basically it takes a hell of a lot of compromise to find an ideal setting.
We worked really hard from the word go at Croft, in the first session on the tires from the race weekend before so that we could identify any problems faster rather than masking them with new tires that gave good grip.
One thing we did spend some time working on was riding with some of the electronics turned off to get a more direct feeling with what the bike was doing so that we could work on the chassis setting in order to try to fix problems rather than use electronics to mask stuff and that helped a fair bit in the beginning although one of the biggest problems throughout the first day was the wind which was pretty full on!!!
We ended up working through a rake of stuff and knew exactly where we were in terms of race tires but setting wise whilst the bike was good for the races we needed some mechanical grip, that was the one thing we were suffering with a bit, however we got through the first round of qualifying on our race spec tires anyway so we knew we could improve a fair chunk for the final two to get ourselves up near the front. Superpole 2 passed without any drama so we were through to the final session, the only drama was that at that point a fairly heavy shower of rain came which made he track wet, no normally this wouldn’t be a problem at all but as it stands no one other than maybe Kiyo and Rutter had actually ridden their bikes in the wet yet here we were with no wet practice whatsoever expected to go out and qualify in the most important session!!!
There were some talks in the pit lane with a few riders and team bosses along with the organizers about what to do but the decision to carry on was taken whenthe shower seemed to pass, I know some of the riders including me weren’t happy to go into that final session having never ridden our bikes in the wet with no wet practice but fortunately the track dried real quick and was pretty much full dry for the final session.
I got out on track with Dan Linfoot about 4 or 5 seconds up the track in front of me and he was chasing Michael Laverty so whilst they were a bit far to use as a target I could at least see what was going on up the track, I used this as best I could and put in my fastest lap of the weekend to go P1 so my 2nd Pole position of the year which I was pretty happy about, I gave Dan a quick thank you hand shake for being my marker after!! ;-)
Morning warm up passed and showed us that the final changes we’d made to the bike the day before and a couple of small things Chris had worked on overnight had worked so all we’d have to do now was wait to see what would happen weather wise.
Working better after our overnight changes!!
After warm up the rain came so we got a 8 minute session to try our bikes in the wet but to be honest it wasn’t really wet enough to get a good feeling, we ended up 3rd in that session anyway so it wasn’t really a drama, now the weather job would determine everything, hopefully it’d be either one or the other, wet or dry…
A word in my ear from race director Stuart Higgs
Typically for the race the drizzle came, it’s the worst situation in the world as a rider, sat on a bike on a track that’s neither wet nor dry not knowing weather to run wets and bank on rain or dry tires and hope the weather doesn’t get any worse but I made me choice, slicks!!!! We set of on the warm up laps and as we pulled up to the line the organizers delayed the start because of imminent rain incoming, I decided to still stick with slicks and quite a few of the guys changed to wets, I knew I needed to get going as quickly as possible whilst the rain was at bay and pulled the pin immediately, I got the hole shot and pulled away from the pack as quick as possible, I busted out a few fast laps then tried to settle in to a good rhythm,I could see and almost smell the weather coming in but I had around a 4 second lead so I just tried to be strong in the drier parts and be careful in the wetter bits, then as Iexited onto the start finish straight I had a problem with my bike and that was me, my race done, it was really unlucky because in all the riding I’ve done on my HM Plant Honda the thing has never missed a beat so to have my first mechanical whilst leading a race was a bit of a bummer but it’s been a weapon all season and all through testing so I mustn’t grumble, my boys do a good job of makingit one of the fastest bikes on the grid and if they could time when it might break it would never happen full stop they’re that on top of things.
My boys worked flat out in between the 2 races to get the engine changed in the bike ready for the 2nd race and on the sighting lap everything felt good so now it was fingers crossed, the conditions were at least dry and the only slight bummer was that because of my lap time in the 1st race I dropped from Pole to P4 for the second race.
I didn’t get the best of starts to be honest, I just missed the jump ever so slightly, it’s the most frustrating thing in the world too because as soon as it happens you know you’re going to end up in the middle of all sorts of nonsense through thefirst few turns, luckily for me it all panned out ok, P3 through the first couple of turns then P2 exiting the chicane after a pass on Hopper, Gary Mason was P1 and I sat watching him through the first lap, on the run down to turn 1 I passed Gary then pretty much straight away the course car came out due to the incident between John Kirkham and Michael Laverty, as the lights went out on the car I knew that all the guys behind would expect me to go immediately on the exit of the hairpin so rather than nailing the exit I rode steady on the exit and then pinned it hoping to catch the others napping and it seemed to work, I pretty quickly built up a good lead from there with a few fast laps and from then on in I just watched my pit board, whenever it dropped below 4 seconds I’d push for a lap or two then check my board to me sure I’d done enough to keep the gap where I wanted it.
Controlling or trying to at least ;-)
Exiting the last turn I switched all the electronics off as I wanted to celebrate my win with a wheelie and if you recall I tried to celebrate the same at Brands Hatch and the electronics cut the wheelie, this time it was perfect, a stand up wheelie the length of the straight!!!!!
Celebrating on top of the podium!!!
I’d like to say a massive thanks to my HM Plant team for all their hard work, a big thank you to all the fans there and finally I’d like to breath a sigh of relief after finally getting a podium at the Croft circuit, it’s been a while coming there and there’s no better place than the top step!!!
So that’s the race that I was least looking forward to out of the way now and I think we were rewarded well for all our hard work, Thruxton is next on the calendar, a track I love, my HM Plant Honda is fast and with the continued hard work of the team I hope we can step up on that top step maybe two times there!!!
Thank you all very much for your support and we’ll catch up again real soon, take it easy, Shakey #67
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