Oulton park 2 2012...

To say that I was looking forward to getting back to Oulton park for round 6 of the championship is a bit of an understatement, let’s face it, things have been going pretty well lately, my bike’s been improving week in week out and having won at Oulton last time we were there, won at Knockhill and generally taken some good steps I was hopeful of some very strong results from last weekends triple header!!

The weather forecast didn’t look particularly special so I never bothered taking my bicycle with me so I was gutted when I woke Thursday to be greeted by bright sunshine, it seems every time I take my bike it rains and when I don’t it doesn’t!! The weather had other ideas for Friday though with a particularly gloomy wet start to the weekend, we had a new spec of engine to try that we were very hopeful of but for some reason in the first session the bike ran like a bag of nails, my data guy Ben made some improvements but the actual performance wasn’t exactly staggering which was a bit gutting, I withheld judgment though hoping a dry session might let me use the engine better and give better feedback on it..

Saturday we finally got a dry session and with some improvements mapping wise the bike started to feel a little bit better, from a chassis point of view the changes we’d been making over the course of the last few rounds were feeling pretty good though and I was enjoying my riding which is always highly important, we knew we needed to improve but ending up P2 and only a 10^th or two off of Tommy was a decent start in the dry.

Due to the three race format from here on in it was straight into qualifying, we knew we comfortably had the pace to get through at least the first session and probably the second but there’s a good few one lap wonders out there and to be perfectly honest using a tyre to the best of it’s ability doesn’t appear to be one of my strong points at the minute, it’s something we’re working on but for me it’s far more important to be strong for race distance than it is for one lap and generally we seem to find ourselves on or pretty damn near front row pace anyway!!

For some reason we got through Q1 no drama at all but in Q2 we started having a few little dramas, nothing major it was just that the engine was feeling real tight on the overrun and I had a bit too much backing in going on whilst trying to run into turns quickly which wasn’t ideal, we got through ok though so it wasn’t a drama, Q3 here we come…

Q3 just didn’t go my way, that’s the long and short of it, we made a couple of little changes to the bike to try to improve the bikes rear corner entry stability but just didn’t find what we were looking for, my cause wasn’t aided either when one of the other guys lapped about 3 or 4 seconds off the pace in the final session yet didn’t move over when waved a blue flag but anyway, no excuses, we weren’t good enough in the final session and we ended up P5 and off the front row, needless to say I wasn’t happy!!

The first race of the weekend just didn’t go to plan full stop, that from my point of view is almost enough said, the problems we’d suffered in the qualifying sessions were compounded massively by a duff rear tyre, I ended up with so much corner entry chatter that I just couldn’t ride the thing, I maintained 2^nd for pretty much most of the race then got passed by Josh at the last corner and dropped to 3^rd, if you thought I was unhappy after qualifying……

Sundays warm up gave us a chance to get out and realize the rear tyre had been a big issue in the previous days race but something was still a miss, if I told you that the race I won earlier in the year I was lapping almost a whole 1.5 seconds per lap average faster that’ll tell you we were up against it, with that pace i could have rode off into the distance this time around!!!

Race 2 and to be honest things didn’t get a great deal better, we pushed hard, stayed closer to Tommy by miles than we had done the previous day, had a good battle with Haga but ultimately finished 3^rd again, it’s strange in a way how two podiums from two races would normally be considered good form but let me assure you it’s not what I’m turning up for, the difference of that 1 posistion between 1^st and 2^nd means everything, and I mean everything, I used to think Foggy was overdoing the winning statements back in the day but I so get it, if you get a 2^nd or a 3^rd who gives a shit, I certainly don’t, both of them mean you lost yet the elation from finishing 1 position higher and winning is the only thing that matters, weird!!!!

After that 2^nd race the boys discovered a problem, the problem, but an even bigger problem was the fact that the problem had been happening for an undisclosed amount of time and we didn’t know where to go to rectify it, it turns out that an electrical issued (yeah I know, an electrical fault ;-) ) had basically not been letting our engine braking strategy work properly but it had been kind of intermittent and engine braking was something we’d been working really hard on for the last few rounds.. the guys or should I say Ben our data guy took a bit of a punt on the setting and Johnny my crew chief went a step further with our chassis setting than we’d ever been so the final race was going to be a bit of a revelation or a disaster, fortunately though it was pretty much the former, it took me a while to get going and to understand the bike and the settings so I was a bit steady initially but once I got my head around things we were away, unfortunately it took me too long to pass Nori in the final race despite catching him quite quickly as the Yamahas just seem to be that bit stronger than everything right now, sure the guys are riding well and I take nothing away from Tommy but shit that thing’s got some grunt and not only that it has good top speed now too, just what we need, not!!!

The race came to a conclusion with Tommy once again putting the hammer down whilst I was stuck behind Nori and gapping me a little but at least in that race I actually felt like we might have an answer, sure we never had the best bike out there but we had a decent package and this isn’t a “I could’ve won that” number it’s simply me being far happier with the bike in the final race meaning I could push harder.


What a cool pic!!!

The team are away now to work flat out to fix our issues, Birdy was really complimentary about my riding at the weekend and has vowed to do whatever it takes to get us back to the front and believe me the mans not shy, hopefully Brands hatch in a couple of weeks will be a whole different ball game, I’m certainly going to do everything I possibly can to make it happen from my end, I want this championship again this year, 2 title’s is nowhere near enough and on that note I’m out of here, take it easy guys ad girls, Shakey #67

Knockhill!!

Well that was Knockhill for another year guys and girls and I’d just like to thank whoever ordered the weather for the weekend because despite the forecast looking particularly grim we didn’t end up like drowned rats on race day!!

We had a pretty good first day on track and somewhat unbelievably we got two pretty much dry sessions, there was one small rain shower but it didn’t really affect us too much at all, we were fastest in free practice one and then just pipped in the second one so we had an idea on what we needed to improve for qualifying and we felt good going forward, the only problem was that we needed at least one more full dry session as pretty much everything you do with your bike chassis or settings wise is devised form your current “dry” settings, my team had done a great job and I was looking forward to the weekend already despite the small air of uncertainty settings wise, we knew we’d get it nailed but like I said it needed to be fully dry and I needed to push 110% to confirm a few things.

Qualifying went ok, by ok I mean we just missed out on the front row, which was a bit annoying really as we were fourth, generally at pretty much every other circuit you have 4 bikes to a row but 4^th at Knockhill meant the 2^nd row, something I never actually realised until I did a bit of surfing that evening in the motorhome and read on a couple of websites, to think I was pretty happy thinking 4^th meant front row, I even did a big wheelie over the start finish line, what a dipstick!! 

Fortunately for me the Sunday morning warm up session was dry, that was luck in itself though as whilst I was sat eating my breakfast it started spitting a little with rain, I sat there staring out of the motorhome window saying words to the effect of “please sod off rain” :-) Being dry we got the chance to try some settings that we’d wanted to try all weekend and despite the fact we used old tyres from qualifying we ended the session fastest and matched my all out lap time form the qualifying session on new tyres so things were looking a bit more promising for the race, well, if they were dry that was!!!

The first race was tough, I mean proper tough, being such an almost ridiculously short lap circa 49 seconds we have to do 30 laps per race and the thing with Knockhill is there isn’t one split second where you get to actually rest on the bike, you’re constantly heaving the thing from one side to the other or fighting to either A) stop yourself going over the handlebars under hard braking or B) stop the bike from throwing you off the back under hard acceleration, bear in mind a little food for thought our Superbikes will accelerate from 0-60mph in 2.5 seconds and the only reason it takes that long is the risk of flipping one!!!!

I got a good start from the 2^nd row and by about lap 3 or 4 I’d taken the lead, It isn’t easy when you have 30 laps with +0 on you pit board but the Rapid Solicitors Kawasaki worked really well, throughout the race the most I could get the gap up to was +0.5 but then it would come down the lap later so there was no rest. At the end of the day though you only need to win by the minimum amount possible and to take the win by just over a second was testament to the job the team did for me, a win is what we were after so we are all well happy with that.

To be honest after such a good first race we’d have been stupid to change too much on the bike, we went with exactly the same settings and I figured I’d try to get a start again then just see how things panned out. One of the reasons we’d kept the same settings from the first race was because in some ways I was surprised by the outright lap times from the first race, I actually felt if needed I’d be able to maintain a slightly faster pace for race two so we just rolled with it, both Michael and Tommy had a strong pace initially and I sat in third thinking right you boys can do the leading for a bit in this one, I’ll just follow happily for a bit, however about 10 laps in I noticed Michael Laverty looking particularly keen to lead and at this point I was behind Tommy, Michael got his head down and to be honest it took me a lap too long to pass Tommy who’s incredibly strong there anyway and by the time I did Michael had pulled about a second or so on me and with the circuit being such a short tight lap it’s almost impossible to catch back up, I desperately wanted another win and pushed as hard as I could but in the end second is better than crashing out and I was happy to come away with some more podium credits for our championship and the top points scorer for the weekend so I have to say a massive thanks to the Rapid Solicitors Kawasaki team for all their hard work, fingers crossed it’ll be more of the same next time out at Oulton park, maybe see you there, take it easy, Shakey #67