About midway through the first session somebody dumped oil down the right hander at the bottom of the corkscrew. There were just yellow flags out but no oil flags. As soon as I turned it right over the blind crest in the middle of the corkscrew I saw a sea of about six bikes and riders on the floor in front of me and before I knew it, I was joining them! I hit the oil and the front folded giving me no chance. Luckily it was a pretty low speed crash and I landed on my right hand side away from the dodgy elbow so that was the most important thing.
Throughout all of Saturday we hardly touched anything on either of the bikes. There was no point because until I was feeling 100% and pushing to where the bike starts reacting as it should, there was more chance of us making something worse. I did what I wanted to do and got on the grid for both races, 13th in Supersport and 7th in FX. Not good but somewhere there/thereabouts for race day so that’ll do.
On Saturday night I wanted to get to bed as early as possibly and try to get myself a first proper nights sleep for 5 nights. That I did and boy did I feel good for it in the morning! I went to the track feeling brighter than I had done for a couple of days. I was still sore but pain is something I can cope with, it’s my head being a bit fuzzy or the not feeling fully switched on feeling that is hard work when you’re trying to concentrate as hard as you have to.
Morning Supersport practice went very well. I got into a good rhythm, going straight to the top of the time sheets within a few minutes and managed to stay there for the rest of the session. I knocked 1.1 seconds off my qualifying time with a time that would have been good enough to put me third on the grid. And I felt comfortable at it.
