First win of the year for boyo!
Hello, hello, fare thee all well? Me? I’m alright, well, I was alright by the end of it. The end of Aragon’s WSB round, to be precise, which went tits up pretty much from the first minutes of practice. I did a lap and we had an engine go bad on us. They managed to get me back out by the end of the session, but as we’d had to cobble a bike together there was another problem. Great…
I don’t know if that motor is gone from my allocation, you never know until they get back to Ducati, but personally I reckon it’s gone. There was no mechanical noise at all, so no idea, but probably terminal. There are quite a few engines in other teams going bang this year actually, it’s odd, it’s never happened much before and my bikes have only ever had the odd issue. Weird!
So that left me with just one practice session, which isn’t ideal as you can’t help but try a bit harder, try to do too much, too soon in too short a time. Mentally it can drive you nuts, but at the same time you feel as though you must try that extra bit harder trying to make up for lost time. Okay, it’s the wrong way to go about it, but it’s just natural when you’re on the back foot.
I didn’t find any rhythm until Saturday, when I got pole position, but it felt a little like I fluked that! It felt like it went well, but often when I’ve felt that before I’ve come back in and Tom Sykes is a second faster, which kind of makes you realise that it wasn’t as fast as you thought!
But it was good to start the race upfront, although we were in a little bit of trouble due to lack of time. I was really struggling to pull the front end down, I didn’t get the feeling I wanted, the right balance. It was either going too slow but feeling okay, or trying a bit harder and upsetting the front. I was struggling a bit and making a few mistakes. I didn’t feel like I was going to crash, but then the bloody thing got away from me on the last corner of the penultimate lap, while leading.
I was pushing on to deny Jonny Rea any chance of attacking, true, but that will always happen when you think you can win. I could have settled, but no, that’s not me, I need to win to beat Jonny. I wasn’t just throwing caution to the wind, I just got unlucky and was lucky in return not to hurt myself, although my meat and two veg got a proper whack!
So I was a bit pissed off, but we did some work overnight, partly to try and curb their advantage through turns two and three where the Kawasakis were a lot quicker than us. We struggle getting on the throttle when turning there, while they seem to be able to do it everywhere. Luckily, we have our own strengths in other areas.
In the second race things weren’t right, we’d had to change my engine again and it wasn’t the same. The fuelling was different, and the auto-mapping could only do so much. Basically, I had a bottom-end issue, and with other riders close I could only do what they were, as the bottom-end was really hollow. I had to rail corners harder and open the throttle earlier to make my time, but the leaders weren’t vanishing. I picked my way through and tried to push even though it didn’t feel great. I tried to let the race come to me a bit, and it did. It almost went wrong however, on the final lap into the hairpin. I went in there with big intent, trying to keep Jonny at bay. The wind was keeping me wide and then I wasn’t positive enough with my back-shift, so I hit a false neutral.
I lost lots of time and Jonny caught back up, almost getting past, but I managed to ride around the outside to keep the lead. He did try and pass and park it mid-turn on the corner onto the back straight, but he left a tiny gap so heads up Jonny, I’m coming through! There was a little bit of contact as he tried to close the door, but I got ahead and went on to my first win of the year, finally!
Given what happened, I was happy, but even happier after the test the next day. The next few races will really show where we are compared to those green bikes, but there’s light at the end of the tunnel. We need to up our game and we have. Bring it on!