The week leading up to the meeting was very busy. I worked a 14 hour shift on Monday to try and make up some of the time needed to miss on Friday. On Tuesday I flew over to Ireland for the North-West 200 press conference. It was a fun but very long day.
To begin with Conor Cummins, myself and Michael Rutter had a look at the new starting lights to try and figure out the correct position, angle and brightness, as this is the first year lights will be used instead of the traditional flag. Then it was off to the beach! The following few hours were bizarre and saw us eating ice-cream, sitting in deck chairs, paddling and ultimately surfing in the North Sea! It was a good �crack� (to quote Ryan Farhquar), and I�d like to have another go sometime, though it was a bit cold! Farqhuar managed to stand up and get a short distance a few times but Conor, myself and Cameron Donald were less successful...
We then moved on to look at some new course markers around the circuit and then on to a boat trip and a live feed for BBC Northern Ireland. Straight from there it was back to the press conference until about 10 o'clock when I had dinner with Ian and the Black Horse men. I was up at 5 o'clock the next morning for Cal Crutchlow�s dad to give me a lift to the airport, arriving at work in Hemel Hempstead by half past nine - no rest for the wicked! Now, on to Thruxton....
I picked Dave up at half past seven on Thursday evening from Luton airport and we headed straight off in the car. I stayed in Ian's truck and Dad came up in ours on Friday morning. There was only one free practice session on Friday before the two qualifying sessions on Saturday, so Friday morning was spent putting up the awning and preparing. We weren't out on track until 2.45 and it was still dry although windy. The forecast for the weekend didn't look very promising and it was possible that this would be the only dry time over the weekend.
As I said earlier Thruxton isn't a circuit that I have a lot of experience at and I struggled from the off. I spent most of the session riding round getting stuck behind huge gaggles of people and never stringing together two corners, let alone a whole lap. It was frustrating because I couldn't really make any changes to the bike apart from gearing as I was going nowhere near fast enough to make it worthwhile. I needed more time on the track to fully commit to the fast, bumpy sweepers that are so unique to Thruxton. I ended up 27th but knew that there were still massive chunks of time to come simply by stringing laps together and pushing a bit harder in a qualifying situation. My ideal laptime was 0.6 seconds faster than my actual time and I had made a hash of each corner in the two sectors so I just hoped it would all come together in the two qualifying sessions the next day.
As it turned out, the next day was wet. This suited me fine as it would help my lack of track knowledge and also take advantage of my wet weather pace. It was forecast to be dryer in the morning session and by the time the second session came around at at 5.20 it would be torrential. It was therefore the plan to try for a time in the first session. We swapped to the spare bike with softer springs as I like a bike to have definite weight transfer in wet conditions. After about five laps I pushed on although it was very difficult with the number of people on track. Again I suffered the problem of not getting any clear track, only the problem was magnified by not being able to see anything when behind somebody because of the spray! I tried dropping back to find some space but this didn't work because there was no space .....people just overtook you in a constant stream when you slowed, so the only answer was to ride it like a race and overtake people as quickly as possible. I got a board with P4 on it about midway through and it went up and down between 3rd and 6th for the rest of the session. As is usual in qualifying, the last laps saw me (and everyone else) really push. I had a bit of bad luck catching people in sections that were impossible to pass and was unable to improve. I ended up 8th on the provisional grid but was quite happy as it was the inside of row two and as good a place as any.
The first part of my previous prediction was correct - it had been raining all day and there was no let up so the track closely resembled a river. However the second part of my prediction- that nobody would go any quicker - was proved incorrect in 3 laps. I rode round for the first half of the session really struggling for space (again!). I kept getting behind huge gaggles of riders who were just stuck at each others pace, and would take two laps to get through them, then do half a lap before I caught the next one. I couldn't see my pitboard and didn't think anyone would be going quicker in the horrendous conditions so I pulled into the pits after 7 laps to find out that I had dropped to 17th overall!
I went back out and had to pull something out of the bag. A few laps later Dad and Sharpy had moved further down the pit wall and I had moved back up to 8th. I improved further each lap but so did everybody else. I went into the last lap with only one person and then what looked like some clear track in front. I was in ninth position at this point and caught the rider in front perfectly to outbrake him at the first chicane without losing any real time. I then ducked under another going into Seagrave. The first sector was my fastest and the speed trap time was also well up with the best. I was pushing alot harder than I had been because of the clear track, a luxury! Going into the final corner I flicked right, then the rear slid slightly on the left. When I flicked right again and into the final corner the suspension unloaded quickly because of the extra corner speed I was holding and just as I tapped on the power I was flicked over the highside.......
As soon as I got up I knew exactly what I had done. A quick trip to the medical centre confirmed that I had separated my AC joint but this time on my left shoulder. Unfortunately this meant that there was no way I could race on Sunday as my shoulder could not even support the weight of my own arm. Obviously both myself and the whole team were very disappointed. We had worked hard and we are sure that a top six was possible in the race. However I refuse to take anything but positives from the weekend.
Thruxton is a very difficult circuit and we proved that we could run with the best and managed to make progress after setup issues at Brands
Hatch. Fair enough I fell off but it's racing and it happens. At least I fell pushing to try and bump up to the front row and was bang on the pace. It is a long season and we also have the international road races to look forward to. I do however have to say sorry to Ian and the team. Two crashes in two meetings isn't the best start to my time with a new team....
I went back to work on the Wednesday after the meeting and my shoulder is getting better by the day so we will be back at Oulton Park on the 3rd/4th/5th May aiming to put in another good qualifying but this time turning it into points in the race! See you there!