The second race at Brands was just pure chaos with everyone lapping everyone else, it was very confusing, and I can only describe it as manic. I wanted to go for wets on the grid and I should have trusted my own instincts and stuck both wets in. Instead I put a wet front in and a cut slick rear, but I just couldn’t turn into the left handers; every time I turned in the back end came round so I was struggling all race long. I just plugged away and I got up to eleventh on the last lap, unfortunately I made a mistake and when Tommy Hill came past me I didn’t know if he was passing me or lapping me so I ran into the second left hander at the back of the pits too fast and the bike came round and put me across the grass and I slipped off.
It was a stupid crash one corner from home, bit gutted with that as it would have been some points in the bag. It was a chaos race anyway and nobody really knew what to do at the start and we just went with what we thought was best. It was good to get the first weekend over, it felt like our first day back at school with everyone settling in again.
The bike is working pretty good now so all the winter testing has paid off and things are coming together. We spent two days just before Brands testing in Guadix and three days in Albacete and that is where we made most of our progress. We did test in January but the weather wasn’t that good so we didn’t get through a lot. The test was good and it helped both me and Michael Rutter understand the bike a bit and help my confidence on the bike. I found a fairly good base setting and I was hoping for more at Brands but it just didn’t click with this circuit. I’ve never had a good history with the Brands Indy circuit, I mean it wasn’t a bad weekend but we should be stronger in the coming meetings. A steady start to our championship but we want more than that.
How cold and wet was it at
Donington Park? I had been hoping for sunshine but that was wishful thinking considering it is the UK in April.
