My only concern about the weekend was that the limited track time that we were getting wouldn’t give me enough time to properly learn the track and set the bike up. As it was the
MotoGP hosting the AMA, our sessions were relatively short, but it wasn't just that. I always ride two classes, with Supersport and Formula Extreme, but this time it was just Supersport so, all in all, I had just an hour and 30 minutes before the race on Saturday night and I was going to have to get on with learning the place. Luckily, I have played plenty of computer games in the past that had Laguna on them, so I wasn’t completely lost. But there’s no substitute for the real thing.
My first session was Friday morning and I just wanted to get plenty of laps in and pick up the track as best I could. The session went fairly well, I picked it up bit by bit and hardly touched anything on the bike. I did a 1min 30.744secs, finishing the session in twelfth. My next session wasn’t until 3:30pm, so I had plenty of time to relax and go out to watch the MotoGP sessions. Or so I thought!
At about 1:10pm, I was sat just outside the Celtic Racing truck, drinking some water, when I noticed Geoff from IRTA, the MotoGP teams' association, heading my way with another guy who I didn’t know, but recognised from GPs as being the team co-ordinator of the Pramac D’Antin team. They looked like they were looking for somebody, but I presumed they were probably just looking at the 1980 Barry Sheene AKAI Yamaha that Barry Gilsenan, my team boss, owns.
I got up to go and say hello to them and Geoff said “Hi Chaz, I think you can guess what this is about.” Of course, I didn’t have a clue what he was talking about - until I remembered hearing that Alex Hoffman had been taken out and was injured in the morning’s practice session. I didn't see the crash that morning, so thought nothing of it at the time, but my heart hit about 220bpm when I realised I was probably just about to get asked to ride a 800cc MotoGP Ducati!
