McPint talks racing support
McPint is ready to get racing, but it won’t be business as usual
Igo a bit flat with the whole racing thing sometimes, like the other week there was a trackday at Oulton Park and one minute I wanted to go and the next minute I didn’t. I did go in the end and I took the Ducati V2 which I’ll be racing in the Ducati Tri Options Cup this year. I’m so glad I went.
I really, really enjoyed it. I didn’t have a stopwatch on me and I just rode round, hitting the sweet spot and the sun was shinning. We’re going to be racing at five of the six rounds of BSB and after months of uncertainty, it all looks a bit more encouraging. ‘THE FUEL LIGHT CAME ON AND I WAS LIKE: ‘WHAT THE F***?’’ The bike feels great, it’s only got low bhp so it’s not pulling your arms out their sockets. Unless there’s a magic wand or a magic fiddle, I don’t think the bike will get much better, but racing is racing and everyone tries to bend the rules. When I go to the first round I’ll look at the speed trap figures and if I’m 10mph down I’ll be scratching my head. All the bikes taking part have to be dyno’d and they need to be within 5bhp of each other. The bike feels heavy so getting some weight off of it might help a bit, but I need to check if that’s within the rules! The problem is that I don’t read the rule books, I’m too used to having my bum wiped aren’t I? But I was there putting my own tyre warmers on, thinking ‘this isn’t normal’. In one of the sessions the fuel light came on and I was like ‘what the f*** is that?’. It’s these sort of things that you forget when you’ve been doing it with a team around you for as long as I have. It just showed me that I need to sharpen up my pencil. It all felt a bit old school, but I loved it. And now I’ve got a spring in my step and I’m looking forward to the next thing.