Oulton park, round 7!!!

Well I think its fair to say that round seven never went quite to plan!!! In fairness our second visit to Oulton Park this year got off to a far better start than the 1^st but as you’ve probably already seen the end result of the weekend was far from what I was hoping for.

Getting back to the beginning of the weekend our first free practice session was dry and I was relatively happy to end the first session P3, that was probably frommemory about 10 places better than the first visit here!!!, that said we still had quite a bit of work to do, we fired a new spec shock into the bike that we’d tried briefly at Thruxton and decided to stick with it as there were some definite positives to be had from it corner exit wise but the problem with it was that it was making the bike transfer it’s weight in a slightly different way making getting stopped and corner entry pretty tricky.

We continued working on the shock in the afternoon session although we tried going in a slightly different direction with it but what we tried didn’t really work that well, yes we got a bit of feeling back for the front of the bike but we lost a bit of the original benefit on corner exit, what with that and the fact that a few of the other riders started throwing soft tyres at their bikes we dropped down the order a little to about 8^th I think, this was going to be a tricky old weekend!!!!

Pushing on out of Druids...

Saturday mornings session came with the forecast rain well and truly in effect, about 6 or 7 of the top guys including Kiyo and myself all fell off pretty much on the out lap, I couldn’t believe it, I’d had a big moment on my out lap and nearly high sided at about 20mph so I thought I’d do one lap just to check the lake that usually forms at turn one then come in to check that everything was ok with the bike as the near miss I’d had shouldn’t in normal wet conditions have happened, the lake I mentioned wasn’t too bad at all so I thought rightI’ll pull in this lap and get the guys to check everything, as I arrived at the Shell Oils hairpin I gently rolled in, went up the bank a bit in case anyone was on line and going for it then when I saw no one behind I went back on line, gently touched the throttle and then the next thing I knew I was up over the high side and pirouetting round and round, the funny thing was though as I spun around and was pointing in the direction I’d just come from I saw James Ellison doing exactly the same thing in tandem with me, fortunately both the bike and I were fine so I picked it up and rode back to the bits, not an ideal start to the session!!!

Two times i nearly fell off on the out lap here, 2 times!!!

The boys fixed my foot peg etc that had got damaged whilst the organizers looked into a track inspection to see why on earth so many riders had fallen and eventually the session was restarted and we got back out, it took me a bit of time to get going as I had massive rear grip and feeling issues that gave me no confidence whatsoever, I even wound my traction aid right up to pretty much max and that was doing absolutely nothing to assist me as the slides and out of the seat moments were happening so fast on such a tiny difference of throttle percentage that the system had no hope, we made various changes throughout the session and eventually I think we ended up 4^th or somewhere around there but I was far, and I mean farfrom happy!!!

Fortunately Superpole was dry, this however threw up it’s own little problems aswe hadn’t had a chance to fix the bike in either the wet or the dry so setting wise it was going to be a bit of a gamble, that said we knew we’d be fast enough on a race tyre to give ourselves a shot on one rear shock then to make a decision as to whether or not we needed to change again, we got straight through on the harder race tyre but did need to make some changes for the second session, as well as the changes we needed to try the softer tyre too in order to pull back a bit of time, the only problem with that was that sometimes as was the case at Snetterton the soft tyre really effects our bike in a strange way, it brings on big problems corner entry wise but then has real good grip on exit, fingers crossed that wouldn’t be the case here!!!

Over hill top, i improved here this time around...

Well with the softer option tyre we managed a pretty good lap time in Superpole 2, the tyre did give us a little bit of chatter but to be honest it was difficult to know if it came from the tyre or the increase in lap time, either way though we were through to the final session which as you’ll know for me is sometimes not possible as twice this year I’ve thrown the bike at the scenery before going through!!!!

I knew that a front row was going to be difficult as the two Yamaha’s were working incredibly well as was Hopper along with a couple of others but fortunately for me it all came together quite well so we did indeed end up P4, in all honesty I was extremely happy with that and its not very often I say that about 4^th place!!!

Cracking on on route to P4...

For the morning warm up we had a little bit more work to do, we needed to test another setting to be sure we had a good race setting for the dry but the weather had some other ideas, the rain came before we went out so we got a bit more time to work on our wet setting instead, to be honest I never drove myself too mad during the session as I once again as was the case in the previous wet session had more than my fair share of moments so I built up real slowly..

It was looking like the weather was in for the day and with only anhour between the start of morning warm up and the start of race 1 we had our work cut out trying to improve our rear grip and stability but I knew Chris my technician would come up with something!!

As the lights went out to start race 1 I got a real good start, I ran into turn 1 behind Hopper but he got in a little deep so on the run down to Cascades I managed to sneak past and from there on in I lead for the first few laps, I have to tell you I was more than having a little chuckle in my helmet, as you will have see if you watched the race I was absolutely useless and the setting we’d chosen for the rear of my bike just wasn’t working at all, I don’t think I’ve ever been out of the seat so many times in one race and was almost convinced I’d end up going down at some point, I couldn’t even touch the throttle mid corner let alone wind it on so god knows how I lead the race,

I have absolutely no idea how i pulled this off!!!

Hopper came past and I managed to get him back but eventually he made it stick so I just tried my hardest without over stepping the mark to hang onto him, eventually Tommy Hill came past too and after that the course car came out for a few laps and that’s when my biggest problems started because the slower pace behind the course car allowed my rear tyre to lose what little temperature it had in it so when the car went in for three laps it was like being on ice, after we got going Rutter passed me but I got him back but with only a few laps remaining and me struggling everywhere I knew he’d be back past by the end of the race the drive he was getting on corner exits would make it impossible nigh on to keep him behind, sure enough my weakest area on the track Druids (the penultimate corner) I had a reasonable exit but not perfect, I moved to the right a little to protect my line but Rutter passed me into the final turn, I knew there was no way I’d out drag him to the line but I had a good go and got spat out of the seat again coming onto the start finish so that was that, a pretty shit 4^th place, that said though considering how utterly useless I felt and how I had to ride I can’t believe we finished as high as 4^th!!!

For race two we’d made a plan and a fundamental change setting wise was fired into the bike, it was blatantly obvious from my rear tyre which still looked like new that the bike was putting nowhere near enough force into the tyre so it basically wasn’t getting hot so it was like riding with no grip whatsoever, I was really looking forward to the second race as I felt I’d be able to lap at least a second or so faster if I could actually use the throttle to drive the bike off the corners but it wasn’t until a fair bit later that due to the continuing rain the meeting had to be abandoned as the track was pretty flooded which was a big shame as I was right up for putting things right in race two!!!!

The team and I had a pretty long debrief after everything had settled down about what we needed in order to move forward a bit with the bike and I’m sure the guys are going to come up with some stuff pretty soon, I’m not sure anything will be ready for Brands but hopefully not long after so I’m looking forward to that.

On reflection Oulton wasn’t really too bad for us, if the Championship was run in the correct way i.e. over a season then I would’ve extended my actual lead but it isn’t so it means naff all which is bloody annoying but I’m still tied at the top of the podium credits with Tommy so from that point of view its all cool too.

Now it’s back to my home circuit, Brands Hatch long circuit, hopefully we’ll be well and truly back to winning ways there!!!!! Take it easy, Shakey #67

Snetterton...

I think every rider including me must be looking forward to the first race here at Snetterton on the new "300" layout. Our weekend got off to a pretty good start with a dealer event at Honda in Norwich, there must of been around 100 odd people that showed up to meet Kiyo and I so we had a really good evening.

As far as riding goes the 1st session went pretty much to plan, we knew what we needed to try and used tyres from the previous Knockhill round to get dialled in, there were no surprises at the top of the time sheets with Hopper going fastest straight away withhis team mate right with him, those guys tested here last week and that obviously stood them in good stead, I split them for a bit but dropped back to 5th at the end of the session when a few riders fired in their new tyres. We knew what we wanted from the bike and my engineer Chris could see the issues I was having in the first session so I looked forward to the afternoon session!!

Session two was both good and bad in equal amounts really, pretty much immediately I went P1 on a fresh set of tyres 1.2 seconds and remained there until most of the way throughout the session but after a good few laps I started to run into some issues with chatter from the rear tyre which were pretty difficult to ride around, at the end of the session we put in a new rear tyre and I had no doubt whatsoever that I'd be able to go a fair chunk faster, on my first flying lap I got badly blocked in the "car park" section and then I pushed hard on my second lap and ran pretty much immediately into the same chatter issues that we'd had on the old tyrebefore which wasn't at all what I'd expected, quite a few of the boys fired in new tyres at the end and the fact that I never improved lap times wise dropped me down to about 8th which wasn't ideal at all however ideal times wise put me third fastest and a tenth of a second off so things are far from doom and gloom!!

Contemplating our next plan of attack!!!

Saturday morning things started to take a bit of a turn for the better to a certain degree, from a race tyre point of view I used the tyres that I'd used the day before and immediately dropped into the 1.48's which was good and then I maintained a run of low 49's for a good few laps which overall is a pretty good rhythm. Towards the end of the session we planned to use the softer rear tyre in order to see what it would do for us lap time wise, we knew that a lot of the others had been doing race runs and then banging in the soft tyre to jump up the order at the end of the sessions and needed to see how it would work for us, I banged it in and felt very confident I could go a very good chunk faster however whilst it had much better grip entering the corner onto the back straight I closed the throttle to peel in and the bike bounced from the rear almost right around on me, I just managed to catch it then peeled in again and it did exactly the same thing, I ended up not even going as fast as I had on the race tyre and together withmy engineer weknew that if we wanted to make the bike work good in Superpole on the soft tyre we definitely had more work to do!!

For the first of the three Superpole sessions we started with a new front and a new soft rear in order to see if the chassis changes we made would make the bike work the softer tyre better, I was pleasantly surprised when I found we'd gone a good way to fixing the problem and found around half a second, It was a good enough lap time to match Hopper and Kirkham with the three of us on 1.48.5.

For the second session we fired in a new rear tyre again and I started my first flying lap, everything was going really good, I saw a yellow flag just after the stadiumsection because someone had run off track, I looked around onto the back straight and saw it was Peter Hickman, unfortunately though I don't think he saw me, as we approached the chicane at the end of the back straight Peter was neither on it or off it and I had to barge my way through pretty aggressively totally unimpressed with the fact he was on line but not pushing hard, my next flying lap though was mega, I hit every pretty much every apex and absolutely totally for the first time all weekend loved it, sure the lap could've been a tiny bit tidier and I could still go a bit faster but when I saw a 1.47.8 or whatever it was I was made up, I even did an extra lap to see what my pitboard said and sure enough it said P1, that was the first 47 of the whole weekend so I was properly pumped and ready for a big attack in the final session!!!

For the final session we started with two new tyres and as I said I was right up for it,after a steady ish warm up lap I got onto the start finnish straight and thought right this is it, let's go, as I got on the brakes though for turn 1 and shifted back to 4th I flicked the bike in and it chattered a bit, not terrible but enough for me to think oh no, please tell me it's not gonna be the same as the morning session tyre, before I knew it I was chattering my way into turn two, then three, four, five and then entering turn 5 the whole bike chattered so bad I almost fell off, I knew then due to the short final session it was going to be touch and go to get back and get another tyre so I completed the lap only to see a 1.48.9, I was absolutely livid and got back to the pits as quick as I possibly could without falling off, when my boys told me in the box there was no time to fire in a used tyre I lost the plot a bit and left the box, I felt so pissed off for me and my boys, we'd worked so hard since the morning to get the bike towork on the soft tyre then get let down with a tyre problem that makes you just about stay up and lap 1.2 slower than the previous session, needless to say my position was far from the pole I thought we may be capable off but a thoroughly disappointing 6th place, I was not a happy boy at all!!!!

For morning warm up we headed out on the race tyres we'd be using for the two races and had a pretty good run, I went P1 pretty much immediately and did a consistent run in mid to high 1.48's which was my best race pace so far for the weekend, the only problem was though we were stiff suffering a little bit from vibration from the rear of the bike so we knew we'd have to make a few little changes for the first race then kind of suck it and see and make any necessary changes if needed for race 2 after looking at race ones data.

To be perfectly honest with you I almost feel the less said about race one the better,don't get me wrong, we got a podium but there was no satisfaction from it for me whatsoever, in the beginning of the race I felt fine and the bike was working good but after the safety car incident I really started to suffer, my bike lost all grip from the rear in the entry to pretty much every corner and I just started dropping further and further back, let me tell you there's absolutely nothing worse than seeing your two biggest current championship rivals starting to pull away from you yet sitting on top of a bike that if you try to push even a 10th of a second harder you'd end up on your backside, I was not a happy boy after the race whatsoever and Chris and I immediately sat down to discuss the changes we'd need to make to the bike in order to be both more competitive as well as getting better tyre wear from the rear of the bike.

Us three seem to be spending a fair bit of time together lately ;-)

Race two had to be a totally different affair for me, I wanted to come out all guns blazing and get back on the top step, the only place I felt my team and I deserved after all the hard work we'd put in over the course of the weekend, however my eagerness cost me dearly off the start when I pretty much dumped the clutch and bogged the engine as the lights went out, you knob head was all I kept telling myself on the run up to turn one, you know how to make things difficult for yourself!!!

After a couple of laps I'd slotted myself into 4th place but then shortly after before I'd had a chance to make any more progress the red flags came out so the race was stopped.

The bike had felt ok in the first few laps so with the organisers deciding that part two of the race would be run over 10 laps we never changed a thing.

For the restart I got a better start and had a couple of turns tussling with Kiyo then next on the horizon was Josh, I passed him after a lap or two and then set offafter Hopper who'd already put a bit of a gap into us all, the lap times I was doing were almost hard to believe and it didn't take too long before I was closing in on his back wheel and taking a good long look at potential passing places, there seemed to be plenty of places I could make time on him but his bike was a little bit stronger than ours on the straights so I knew I was going to have to get pretty creative to take the win.

A few corners after this it all went wrong!!!

On the penultimate lap I put a move on to him up the inside at Coram which worked perfectly, fortunately I kept a good tight line and made the pass clean, I made a pretty wide entry onto the start finish straight to try as hard as in could to get maximum drive otherwise I knew he'd pass me before turn one and that worked out cool, turn two I entered slightly tight and again all was cool, I got a decent run through three and fully expected him to try to pass into the Agostini hairpin which he did but fortunately he ran in too deep and I got back underneath him, my run through turn 5 was good and I set myself well for turn 6 and then the next thing I knew there was a bang and we collided, unfortunately for me Hopper got into turn 6 so hot that he punted me out of the track and into the grass, as you can probably imagine right there and then I was far from impressed, Hopper and I had a second or so over the guys behind and were almost creation of a one two and an extended championship and podium credit advantage but for me anyway all that was gone and I ended up 4th with Hopper 3rd.

I found out afterwards that I'd done the fastest lap of the race but to be honest that wasn't really doing much in the way of consolidation, at least though Kiyo took the win so I was happy for the team in general.

Hopper came to my motorhome a little while after to apologise for the coming together so we had a chat and everything's cool now between us, I felt gutted that we ended up 3rd and 4th though as this had been apart from maybe the first Oulton round probably the hardest we'd had to work all year to be competitive and I have to say a massive thanks to Chris and my boys for all their hard work, I'm gutted I couldn't give them a win but it wasn't for a lack of trying!!!!

Abou the only consolidation of race 2, The fastest lap!!

Take it easy guys and girls, Shakey #67

Knockhill...

After the previous round back at Thruxton I was really looking forward to getting out on track at Knockhill, we gained some valuable information at Thruxton that we hoped would give us a good step forward in the dry, however it had to be in the dry and typically dry it wasn't!!!

I spent all weekend like this... in a coat!!!!

I have to say before I go any further how impressed I was with what the circuit owners have done since I was last there, if you watched back in 2008 you'll recall the big crash I had at turn 1, quite literally the instant I touched the brakes I was off and after sliding down the track I hit the curbs, took off and flew straight into the tyre wall, well now they've really opened that section right out so when you do have a moment or run straight on you can spend more time getting stopped before needing to turn which is much better, they've also built a proper pitcomplex with garages too which was somewhat of a necessity, also not that you can see it but they've done a whole load of drainage work too to stop all the rivers that run off the track in the wet turning into oceans so like I said I was well impressed!!

I've got to admit that we didn't exactly drive ourselves mad during the first days practice sessions, I went P1 pretty much as soon as I got out on track and stayed there both times until the last few minutes or so, we knew we had a pretty good wet setting from Thruxton although that said due to the nature of Knockhill and the drop in grip compared to Thruxton in the wet we had to soften the bike off a little bit more just to get some feeling, the biggest problem was actually rear corner entry grip, basically everything was cool until you peeled into a corner off the throttle and off the brakes then just as you thought all was cool the rear end would try to come around all on it's own making things a little bit tricky at times, especially at turn 1.

Using all the track in the wet, this would catch me out in Superpole!!!

Final free practice went well, the track had pretty much a dry line the whole way round, I really enjoyed the session which actually got extended due to ever improving conditions, I was quite comfortably fastest even though I concentrated on a few little issues, I knew we still had some time left both in me and in the bike too so this was positive heading into the next sessions which obviously were for grid position.

To be honest with you with you by this point all I really wanted was some full on dry time on track, I knew we could be competitive in the wet but with race days weather forecast being dry we needed to be sure we had a decent dry setting to, this however wasn't to be and the drizzle slowly but surely started to return.

Head down and tucked in!!!

We managed to blast through the first session easily using intermediate tires but it was going to be a race against time to get through all the sessions in this manner, I got straight though superpole 2 too also on the inters but there was no way that was going to happen in the final session when the rain started to come down far more heavily.

Quite a cool shot that!!!

We changed the bike back to a "wetter" setting and I headed out feeling positive, Hopper was about a second or two up the track and I planned to follow him using him as a marker, I did one flying lap basically just to get a feel for the circuit and the conditions then on the start of my next lap I thought right this is it, lets get on it, I had a good run down through turn 1, then the next couple of turns too, then a good drive up to the chicane, changed direction, picked up the throttle then BANG, down I went, I literally just caught the edge of the white line with the front tyre at the same time as the bike transferred a bit of weight towards the rear and that was it the front tucked and down I went, what a dick, that was all I could think as I barrel rolled through the wet mud and gravel, such a rookie mistake but at the same time a mistake that I’d gotten away with throughout the first two superpole sessions, gutted, nothing like making things difficult for yourself, mind you on a positive note at least I lasted all the way through to the final session this time around!!!!

Morning warm up was by far the driest the track had been, again it was a fun session and one that went pretty well for us, all we had to do now was sit tight and wait to see what the weather was going to do…

Well, the weather got drier, and drier, to the point where the track was completely dry for race 1, we had to gamble a bit setting wise and went with a setting very similar to the one that we used at Croft, obviously I couldn’t risk trying the settings we wanted to test that I mentioned at the beginning of this Blog but we figured we’d go safe and then try to make any necessary changes for race two.

Starting form the third row of the grid at Knockhill was never going to be easy, its completely different making up time and places somewhere like Thruxton compared to Knockhill, the latter being pretty one line in a lot of places with just the one big passing opportunity at the end of the lap into the hairpin.

As the lights went out for the start I rode straight down the outside towards turn 1, I got a fairy decent run through the first couple of turns and made up a couple of places to slot in around 6^th I think, I had Josh Brookes just in front and lined him up in a few places before making a move a couple of laps later into the hairpin, the only problem was that when I passed I got a bit crossed up and had to let the front brake off a bit to get straight and with that I ended up running wide and costing myself a load of time, a couple of laps later I made the pass again and that time made it stick, then it was a case of trying to bridge the gap up to the guys up front. With Knockhill being such a short lap it took a good few laps to catch and pass Gary Mason and with about 6 or 7 to go I passed him down into the hairpin and then immediately set about bridging the small gap to John Hopkins, I think my 2^nd to last lap was my fastest lap of the race and I did indeed manage to get on his back wheel, he was making a few little mistakes and I thought I would maybe be able to sneak 2^nd from him but in the end he held me off, luckily for me though my run through from 9^th earned me the 2^nd fastest lap so at least for race 2 I’d be starting from the front so I’d have half a chance of a good result.

We made some small changes to the bike for the 2^nd race as we’d really struggled for rear grip exiting the hairpin, it was so difficult to put the power down to the ground so we needed to work on that as with a good exit from there you can sometimes make a pass up over the start finish line.

I got a pretty good start and slotted immediately into 2^nd through turns 1 and 2 before nipping up the inside of Hopper into turn 3,

from there on in I tried to pull the pin and pretty much immediately opened up a second gap, I remember thinking bloody hell this is going to be a long old race, 30 laps with no margin for the slightest error, then a few laps in the course car came out, initially I was gutted because that broke my gap but when the lights went out on the course car I lined up for a good exit from the hairpin and managed to hold my lead, after I crossed the line though I saw the course car flag again and initially thought the marshalls must have not put them away yet but at turn 1 they were waving and as I dropped through turn 1 I saw Hopper trudging through the mud, this obviously made a big difference to the championship as he’s 2^nd to me at the minute, with racing resumed again I changed my start again by this time not nailing it immediately on the exit of the hairpin and instead waiting because I didn’t want anyone getting the jump on me, this plan worked too and I held the lead for a good few laps more, Tommy then passed me down into the hairpin but I got him back just driving back out, I lead again for another couple of laps and exactly the same thing, I just managed to get back passed on the run down to turn 1 but the third time Tommy passed me he held me off, he and I had already bashed fairings the whole way up the start finish straight a few times and with Hopper out I decided 2^nd and 20 points plus 2 podium credits was the best option, the Yamaha’s just seemed to be working that bit better than our bike at this track, to be honest it’s exactly what I’d expected and not every track is as stop start as Knockhill so things will even back out for sure, Tommy got about 2 seconds on me which he held but I had my hands full with the other Yamaha of his team mate M Lav, he kept me honest right until the end of the race so I ended with a 3^rd and a 2^nd which was far from dreadful but somehow things just don’t feel the same when you don’t win at least one!!!

After the race the team told me about Jason’s accident and it sounded pretty nasty so I had a quick shower and headed straight down to Dunfermline with my team boss to go to see him, unfortunately though it was pretty bad and when we got there he was being prepared for his initial operation to have his spleen removed so we didn’t get to see him.

The next morning though he was awake so I nipped in to see him before we headed off back down south, he was in good spirits if not a little groggy, he has to wait a few days to stabilize before they fix his broken leg and ankle so I guess the way to finish this blog is A to say a big thanks to HM Plant Honda for all their hard work over the weekend a B to say a massive get well soon to Jason. Take it easy guys and girls, Shakey #67

Holiday...NOT!!!!

Hey guys and girls, thought i'd post a quick blog to bring you up to speed with what's been happening since after Thruxton. We were due to head straight back to Spain for two weeks holidays, that was the plan but a few bits and pieces came up that delayed our departure by a day or so which was a bit frustrating!! By the time we finally got home we'd been gone for 48 days, it doesn't sound a lot does it but turn it into almost two months and it sounds a bit longer, that amount of time without your own bed or away from your pets, in fact that amount of time away from HOME full stop grinds on you a little, it definitely had an effect on both my wife and I that's for sure because I don't think I've ever done so much grafting around the house as I did during this supposed break, I've been like a proper Jack of all trades, painting spare rooms, clearing some parts of a completely over grown garden including stabbing myself to bits trimming palm trees, tidying up my garage and generally sweeping up and tidying full stop. It was kind of weird because both Petra and I got back to Spain thinking we'd be flat out relaxing and getting some sun shine, enjoying a bit of a break but the weather for pretty much the whole 2 weeks was pretty crap, I got in no more than two or three cycle rides due to seemingly constant rain and thunderstorms and whenever the weather did brighten up a little I seemed to find myself battling through the jungle that used to be our garden!! In a funny kind of way though that sort of manual labour feels quite rewarding, I'm always right up for going at things like a bull in a China shop but generally don't get on with more detaily bits but this time around I was right amongst everything!!

We had a chance to get in to see our Dr who confirmed everything's going well with the pregnancy which was good news, I'm quite looking forward to the final 4d scan which we'll be getting soon in the UK, they're incredible, we still keep a photo of our son from a 4d scan that we had with him!!

I had a bit of a mission loading the Vito the other day ready to head back up to the UK, I think it works out another 5 or 6 weeks we'll be gone this time which makes packing a bit of a nightmare, that said we got it sorted and made our way north towards the UK, we had a complete and utter ball ache of a drive up though due to traffic around Paris but we got to the UK in the end, now though I'm hearing the seat belt sign and preparation for landing message on our flight up to Edinburgh so I've got to crack on, I'll keep you posted on Knockhill as soon as, take it easy, Shakey #67

Thruxton!!!

I've got to admit I'd been looking forward to coming to Thruxton ever since we left Croft, I mean leaving a circuit that I'd never been on the podium at and one that the team struggled at last year having built up a lead in race 1 and then winning the second race filled me with confidence heading to a track that A I love and B the team won at last year!

Riding here is a real cool experience, the place is so fast generally and also has the fastest corner in British racing, aptly named "Church", we go from flat out in 5th back one gear, a dab of brakes then flick in, the exit kind of opens out which results in some full on maybe 130mph slides, I love it!

Our 1st session went really well, I got out on track and literally within 3 laps I set a time that only I bettered ever so slightly for the whole 45 minutes session, Tommy Hill got closest towards the end of the session but I still managed to remain just under half a second clear which was a right result, we managed to work through a few little bits and pieces too throughout the session in order to give us some direction for the afternoon session.

For the second session we got out and tried some new tires, I pushed quite hard initially and busted out a good few laps straight away, the laps felt pretty good but my lap timer didn't come up for the first two or three laps, I saw P1 on my board again but had no idea how fast I'd gone, it turned out at that point that I'd managed to go nearly three quarters of a second faster than the morning session. We had a plan in place for the second session though which included trying a couple of rear shocks as well as different ride heights etc, we managed to work through all the stuff we had and ran 2nd nearly the whole session to Tommy but not even a 10th of a second away, towards the end though I used another race tyre and managed to pull a few more tenths despite not managing a particularly good lap i managed to pull just over a quarter of a second clear.

Sunday mornings free practice went pretty good, we started the session on a used rear tyre from the day before in order to check our rhythm and to get an idea of how the bike was going to behave once we had getting towards race distance on it and that went pretty well, I put in a new soft rear at the end of the session as we needed to see if the soft one would help us outright lap time wise and it seemed to, the only problem was I towed around James Westmoreland and he pulped me to the top of the time sheets but by less than a tenth so it was all good.

For the 1st of the qualifying sessions we had a plan, we knew that just one average lap on new tires would be enough to get into the top 20 so I set off out to do the lap, as it was the bike felt real good on new race tires I did the fastest 1sector of the whole weekend on route towards the final chicane, the lap had been good and I knew that I could pull in straight afterwards as we had a few things we wanted to try with the bike before we put the softer tyre in for sessions two and three, however, I ran up into the chicane a tiny bit quick and had to make a pretty big deal of the left, I pulled it back well though and straightened the bike up for a strong exit to try to recover the time, the next thing I know the bike was properly sideways at which point it was going to be more luck than judgment as to whether it straightened out but at that point the traction cut quite hard due to the slide which snapped the bike back and sent my skywards, I landed with a bit of abang and properly knocked the wind out of myself for a minute or so, I hurtmy knee and had bashed my right wrist but other than that and the winding I felt ok ish, quite fortunate really asthe last time I crashed at that corner back in 2000 on the SP 1 I broke my back!!!!!

That night I went to bed pretty early for me, I'm terrible if I do that, if I try to get to bed like half hour or so earlier than I have in the last few days I end up sat staring at the ceiling and that night was no exception, bloody half past two I finally fell asleep, gutted!!!!

Morning warm up went pretty good to be honest, It was important for me to get out there and get amongst it straight away, despite the rain in the air I went straight into the 1.15's which is good and managed a run of very low 1.16's despite a visor problem whereby i used a dry conditions visor with no Pinlock or Foggy mask which meant I eventually had to abort mission as I couldn't see a thing!!!!

Lining up at the very back of the grid was a bit weird, the conditions from warm up had got worse pretty much to the point where it was nowhere near wet enough for full wets but was to wet for slicks but as we sat on the grid the rain came a bit heavier so the organizers gave us an 8 minute wet practice instead of starting the race.

After the wet practice the weather continued to close in making the tyre choice relatively simple, I went with wets front and rear, a couple of people gambled on an intermediate rear and just before we got going it might have been the way but with more rain due any second we went safe!

Being on the last row of the grid there was a fair bit of spray as soon as we got going, I never got a bad start but I couldn't see a thing and being on the outside of turn 1 Ididn't want to risk running around the outside of some of the tail enders only for one of them to make a mistake, run wide and then take me out, it's always a difficult balance between making as much progress as possible with the least risk possible, once rolling though and through the first couple of turns I started picking people off, the biggest problem was vision though, on the way through the pack I got so much spray which somehow got up inside my helmet and pretty much made seeing where I was going absolutely impossible, I'm not even joking, if you see me shaking my head on TV in the race it was to try to get the moisture to blow one way or another but it didn't work at all, it was so frustrating because I was riding crap because I couldn't be sure where I was on track, my HM Plant Honda was easily good enough to win on with the wet setting we had but I couldn't see to use the bike to my advantage, I couldn't even see my pit board let alone the numbers on it and the first time I realized I was getting near to the end of the race was when I sawthe big yellow board with a black cross that denotes last lap, at that point I thought Christ I need to get my finger out and pass Rutter, I realized there and then I was out of time to challenge Michael Laverty but I thought 2nd was on the cards.

I got a real good run out of church on the last lap and got passed Rutter and tried to hold a tight line up into the chicane, the only trouble was with no one in front to use as a braking marker I had no idea when to brake and I actually braked a bit early and ran into the chicane far too slow, Rutter squeezed around me and I figured I'd square of the last corner and out drag him to the line, the trouble with him is though he's to bloody clever, he exited the last turn using the Ducati's traction control but kept going right squeezing me in towards the wall meaning I had to lean further and struggled to accelerate on the side of the tyre, I stoodmy bike up and got a bit of a wheelie and lost drive towards the line so Michael popped me and got 2nd, I was more than happy anyway though as coming from 33rd to 3rd was pretty cool and not only that I got the fastest lap of the race so I would start race 2 from Pole Position anyway!!!!

I told my guys after the race that my bike was plenty good enough to win and knew that would be possible if I could get out front, ride smoothly and use my own lines rather than trying to pass people here, there and everywhere using up too much of my rear tyre, I was pretty pumped if not a little nervous for race 2, the real good thing though was that the rain had continued and the track was definitely fully wet!!!!

As the lights went out I got a pretty good start, 2nd into turn one behind Rutter, I made my move as soon as we got out the back section of the track and then pulled the pin, I put in a few really clean laps and immediately built up a bit of a lead, once I saw that I pushed a bit harder for a few laps to get a good gap which for a few laps was around 4 seconds, I was riding totally within myself and felt real good, my bike was once again perfect, I was riding thinking blimey how can this gap keep getting bigger when I'm not pushing, I came around on about lap 6 and saw the gap had gone up to 7 seconds and at that point I thought right let's just maintain this pace, not push at all, enjoy the race and see what happens, as it was the gap just kept going up and up and up so I just rode it home, by the end I think I won the race by just under 11 seconds which felt absolutely fantastic!!!!!,

I knew that if I needed to I could of probably lapped at least half a second if not more faster without laying it on the line so I felt on top of the world, a third and a win after a big crash Saturday afternoon and starting from last place on the grid in the first race was mega!!!

After all that's happened this weekend something to me which is almost as important as the results was how much as a team my side of the garage learnt about my bike, we tried a few new things setting wise and got some really useful information which I'm hoping we can take forward for the rest of the season, I'd like to say a massive thank you to my HM Plant team and also to all the fans who've once again been fantastic, just a quick one to end on now and it's a MASSIVE get well and get back soon to Stuart "Ratboy" Easton.

Talk to you all again soon, take it easy, Shakey #67

Croft, lows and highs!!!!

I’m sure in my last blog to you guys I explained that after the difficulties we faced at Oulton Park during round 2 that my team booked us a testat Darley Moor, it’s a track I’d never been to before but the team assured me that it was absolutely perfect for the electronics work we needed to do.

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 3^rd 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 3^rd 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 2^nd 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 3^rd 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 2^nd 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 1^st 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

Oulton park, round 2!!!

After the weekend we had at Brands Hatch I honestly wanted to drive straight up to Oulton park that evening to continue riding, in a way Brands actually felt like the 1^st time I’d actually properly ridden my HM Plant Honda, sure I’ve done hundreds of kilometres testing it but racing’s just some thing else and I enjoyed it a lot!!!!

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 7^thon 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 4^th 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 4^th, 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 3^rd 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