Gary Johnson
This month, I’ve mostly been flying around the world and racing in the Macau GP in China. A big gang of us came out before the event to acclimatise and to get things ready, but a lot of work went into the bike before we even left the UK. And it showed – the first session was easy and I felt more than at home on the BMW HP4 Carbon.
The only thing we didn’t get correct was the gearing. We altered it for Q1 and it was ok, but the short wheelbase made the bike almost un-ridable at a fast pace. We decided to run the taller gearing (from Q1), with a five gear pattern, so that we could have a longer wheelbase. I hadn’t really liked it in first practice, but once I got the hang of how to get the best out of it, I found that it worked fairly well.
In the first race start I got off the line well and felt as though I could start pushing on. I’d been having really good tyre wear on my Metzeler tyres so I knew I’d be in a better place at the end of the race compared to the guys on Dunlops, who were struggling after six laps. With this in mind, and looking at all the lads around me on the grid using Dunlops, I didn’t think a podium finish was going to be out of the question.
Unfortunately, due to an accident, the race was red flagged so we had to restart. I made some minor changes to the set up and I could tell from the warm-up lap that the bike was better, but I got a really poor start. I’ve been struggling to get the BMW off the line and we’ve been working on limiting how bad a start I get, rather than trying to get the very best start.
I was behind the Finnish rider Erno Kostamo and he was riding hard, but I could see the front lads getting away so I stuck a pass on him and within the lap I’d bridged the gap to the leaders – I knew that that lap was going to be a fast one. The BMW was feeling fantastic and I felt easily strong enough to battle for a podium.
I’d just got on the back of the leading group when the second red flag came out. We had no idea at the time of the carnage that was unfolding on a separate part of the track – luckily nobody was too badly injured, but it was a nasty six bike pile-up. So we ended up eighth, which doesn’t reflect how well the bike was running, or how I was riding, but there is always next year!
Now all the racing stuff is over, a big group of us have come over to Thailand for a bit of a party holiday. My girlfriend, Freddie, met us in Macau, so she has come over with us. We had a great night in Pattaya with my old mate Stevie Heneghan. It was a proper party atmosphere. There were balloons everywhere and people throwing up in sinks – it was my kind of night! And it was great to get a taste of the local culture and partake in a few Thai pastimes. All good things must come to an end though, so we will be heading home soon.
Despite the race not going as anyone planned, it’s been a good trip and I got on with the whole Ashcourt team really well. Hopefully, when we are home we can talk about the possibility of putting something together for next year. Watch this space!