I’ve got to say fair play to John Reynolds for just getting out there with a leg in the state that his is in. My dad broke his leg in two places last September and only now is it coming close to normal and JR only did his in February so he’s surely in quite a bit of pain.
After Brands, Casey went to Worcester with a friend of his who has come over from Australia to race in the British 125cc Championship and I went back to Shakey’s as two days later was the Dorna 2005 Grand Prix Launch for the British press so it wasn’t worthwhile going back to the Welsh borders.
The launch went pretty smooth. There was DJ, Shakey, James Ellison, Paul Denning, Phillip Bernie who is the sports director at the
BBC, Manuel Arroyo who is second to Carmelo Ezpeleta at Dorna and myself. There were quite a few journalists there from daily Newspapers and bike magazines etc. After the press conference we went home and picked up Casey on the way back.
We flew to
Jerez on the following Wednesday afternoon straight into Jerez airport which is only 15 minutes from the circuit. I did a couple of laps of the circuit by scooter later that afternoon, as I knew I’d be pretty busy on Thursday.
On Thursday we had all the usual pre-season photos of all the riders on the start line. The weather for the weekend was forecast as mostly sunshine but partly cloudy for most of the 3 days.
We were starting the weekend pretty close to the same set-up we had at the test. The engine is exactly the same as what we’ve had since the first test of the season, which is the standard Aprilia kit, so we’ve got to do our best with the equipment that we’re on. You can’t do any more than that.
