Ten minutes after being approached, I was signing IRTA paperwork allowing me to ride for the Pramac d'Antin Ducati team.
I had a quick briefing with one of the safety officers for
MotoGP, just informing me of the few different rules and procedures to those in 125/250cc. Straight after that, I was running down to the Celtic Racing set-up to grab leathers, boots, gloves, back protector, earplugs etc. Then I went straight to the porta-office building of Pramac D’Antin. Alex Hoffman is one of the only guys in that paddock who is a very similar size to me, so I tried on his leathers as they had all the right sponsor patches for the team. Luckily, the fit was just about perfect - just imagine if I'd been asked to replace Dani Pedrosa!
From there, I went over to the garage for the first time. By now, there were about three minutes to go until the start of the session. I had a quick brief from my chief mechanic about the dos and don'ts and that was it, the light was green with no chance to even sit on the bike to check bars, brake/gear lever positioning. Time to go!
My first impressions of the bike were quite strange. It wasn’t going to do anything for you - if you wanted to go fast on it, then you had to make it work. You had to be going reasonably hard on the brakes to get the feeling and the bite that the carbon gives, and, on my first lap, I was quite surprised at the power. It didn‘t feel that much at first - until I realised I was only using half of the bike's capabilities! It wasn’t until I had completed the first lap and got back to where I could open it up on the start/finish straight that I could really get a feel for just how much power it had. It doesn’t stop pulling, the feeling and rate of acceleration felt the same when changing from first into second as it did from fifth to sixth. It was by far the fastest thing I have ever ridden.
