Normally Mike would have talked me through it but now that the radio was kaput I had to bite the bullet on go for it without any guidance. Luckily I had listened well during our lectures and I landed it pretty well. All in all it was a really fun week and something that I’d like to get into a bit more next year.
So, onto Valencia (middle picture)... basically I knew before the weekend started that it wouldn’t be plain sailing. The team I rode for were a small Italian outfit called Team Grillini and the money behind the team was coming from a company called CRP technology. CRP put the money into the Fantic project in 2005 and decided they would like to develop their own parts but using a standard Honda as the base of the bike.
The team really had very little expectations before the weekend started and some of the parts on the bike were still yet to be tested on track so it was definitely a weekend of experimentation for them. I had to re-adjust back to the 250cc way of things after my brief outing on the four-strokes in America and I was more or less positive that it would be my last 250cc outing.
I love riding the 250s as they are a proper bike and also feel quite lucky that I got to ride a 250cc Aprilia for a few years with some decent results. People say that the 250cc Aprilias are one of the hardest bikes to ride. Just when you think you’ve got the knack of them… they show you otherwise and the next thing you know, you’re being spat off the top of it!
Anyway, back to Valencia. The first day of practice on Friday was plagued with lots of small problems. I got very few laps throughout the whole day and in first qualifying had the engine nip-up which knackered one of my decent cylinders. The team didn't have any spare cylinders so we had to borrow one from team Molenaar which is never ideal to add odd cylinders.
