Knockhill test

If I'm being honest I'd have to say that after the two UK tests we had at Brands and Snetterton I wasn't exactly 100% race ready going into the first round of the championship at Brands, fortunately though my team boss booked Rat Boy and I an exclusive test up at Knockhill in Scotland, now while I'd be the first to say that Knockhill wasn't exactly the ideal test track for us due to the problems we were still trying to get to the bottom of it would indeed have a few tricky little sections on it which would definitely give us something to work at.
The weather couldn't really have been much better to be honest, I reckon we must of had around 18-20 degrees and sunshine all day so it was perfect, as soon as we got out on track it became apparent that whilst the circuit doesn't flow quite as much as some circuits nothing less than 100% there will get you anywhere near where you need to be lap time wise and with the bikes now having no traction control or wheelie control etc the nature of the circuit was definitely going to give us a bit of a work out!!!!
Fortunately the problems we'd been battling against in previous tests and started to get the upper hand with we're there in the background which meant we could carry on where we'd left off in Snetterton.
I got down to a pretty fast time within about 6 or 7 laps and the funniest thing about that was that on my first couple of laps the bike felt perfect, dead composed, controlled and nice and easy to ride but a second or so a lap faster and boom, there we have a whole different beast to deal with, all cool though and a great challenge!!!
As the day went on we started doing more and more work and trying different things that we hadn't yet had the chance to test and it threw up some real interesting feelings, one thing we were finding was that after about 35 laps or so my lap time constantly compared to my fastest was so consistent it was almost unreal, I'm not kidding when I tell you that on a number of occasions I actually thought my lap timer had broken because the lap time was so similar every lap!!
About 1 ish we put in our first pair of new tyres and I felt very confident of knocking another chunk of time off my previous best which was already pretty fast but after about a 6 lap run it was obvious we had a duff rear tyre, I knocked 2 10ths off my best lap but was sideways everywhere in doing so, I pulled in and we checked the tyre and it looked like it hadn't even been out on track, it was literally brand new in appearance!! A new rear and another couple of 10ths but this time consistently saw a big smile come on my face!!!
The great thing about this test was every time we made a change to the bike if it was good we went faster or not so good I could lap nearly as fast but it was far harder work, the team worked so well in fact that at the end of the day we actually got through our test plan and simply ran out of time to test anything else, we got exactly what we needed from the day though in more ways than one, we got a load of work done, ticked a load of boxes in terms of things we wanted to try, got to the bottom of some of the problems we'd been suffering all along, made a bit more headway with the electronics, got me feeling far happier on the bike AND got 82 race pace laps in from a fitness point of view!!!
I'm sat on my flight now on the way back to Gatwick feeling far more positive about the whole job, that's not to say I was feeling negative before perhaps just a bit more apprehensive about things, I feel better prepared now and really look forward to getting started, sure Brands and all the other races this year are gonna be incredibly tough and we'll find out just how tough in just over a week but at the end of the day if BSB was easy then everyone would be doing it, I'm certainly looking forward to those lights going out at Brands, that's when the talking stops and we find out exactly where we're at, fingers crossed it'll be in front of 31 other riders and well on route to another BSB Title, take it easy, Shakey #67