When we got to Oulton I went out on the pushbike for a good few laps and then myself, Jason (my team mate) and a few of his buddies headed out for a bit of a pedal around the local area, we soon decided to ride to Chester and found a nice little coffee shop for a quick break before heading back to the track and boxing off the ride with a few more laps of the track, I tell you something that place doesn’t seem half as hillyon a bike with an engine ha ha ha!!!
Little did me and my team realise the following day just how muchof a shock we were going to be in for the minute we set out on track on the race bike, I love Oulton park anyway and watching Kiyo wrap up his championship there last year was one of the things that convinced me the HM Plant team was the one for me this year, however, aftera couple of laps to settle in I immediately started to push but saw my position in the session gradually going further and further down, in the interests of not dragging on forever with each session etc I’ll tell you straight, we had issues, BIIIGGGGG issues, we couldn’t stop because of our engine breaking strategy playing up, we couldn’t go due to problems electrical and basically just couldn’t be consistent full stop with it.
A little bit off line!!!
Both Kiyo and I worked on various ideas to try to help us but we were in such a pickle even after hours and hours of studying data etc that come qualifying there really wasn’t any point whatsoever in using a soft tyre, in a way you could say that qualifying 7thon a race tyre wasn’t bad but let me tell you that was by riding what I had with my eyes shut for one lap and was never going to go race distance, not in a million years!!
Using all the track and trying hard!!
For morning warm up my crew chief Chris had come up with some ideas which made the bike a fair bit easier to ride, basically itfelt likeevery aspect of the bike was fighting the next aspect so it was a constant conflict but Chris sussed the job out and we went a bit better in that session so whilst I was far from thinking we’ll nail these races no problem but I did feel a bit more at ease.
In deep discussion with my crew chief Chris and Ohlins man Richard..
A bit more on it!!
As the lights went out for race 1 I was praying for a Brands hatch start but didn’t quite get it, it wasn’t terrible but it wasn’t great either, I realised fairly early on that I was in a bit of a pickle because I was really struggling to get the bike stopped and because of it overtaking was a night mare, being overtaken on the brakes was an even bigger one!! Towards the end of the race though when the bike had burnt off some fuel and got a bit lighter I started to be able to make some passes, I had a bit of a coming together with Michael Rutterwhich wasn’t really necessary and nearly took us both down, I’d managed to pass Michael on the brakes on the way down towards Hizzy’s but he let the brakes and leaned on me, I had nowhere to go other than over the kerbs on the inside and ran off the track narrowly avoiding taking us both down, that cost me a load of time and ultimately probably a podium, I hauled my way back up to 4th and ended off less than a second off the podium, I was gutted not to make it to the podium but at the same time highly relieved that I’d got a 4th, at one stage before qualifying I was just about managing to stay in the top 15!!!!!!
Race two went slightly better, we made some small changes to the bike so that I could attack from the beginning and the changes seemed to work, I did get passed a few times after making a few small mistakes but it was because I spent both races riding on and sometimes too far over the limit, luckily though race two panned out slightly better when I managed to nip past Kiyo on the final lap to claim 3rd place, all things considered though I guess after the way the weekend had gone I should have been doing somersaults withthose results not being unhappy, one thing’s for sure though I definitely gave it 100%!!!!
A little bit happier!!!
We had a big team debrief after the races and the team immediately booked us a test at Darley Moor to try to get to grips with the electronics, it was 100% necessary so I couldn’t wait to get back on the bike away from a race meeting to do some work!!
Massive thanks to Chris, my boys and the whole HM Plant Honda team, it was a very, very difficult weekend at times but we all stuck together, worked very hard and came away with two not terrible results, fingers crossed things will get back to normal next time out and we can get back to winning!!!
Thanks everyone for all your support, talk to you all soon, Shakey #67
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