We flew into Tours on Wednesday afternoon which is about 80kms from the circuit. When we got to the circuit Shakey gave me his mountain bike and we both did a few laps of the circuit. On Thursday I did the usual re-looking over last years data just to make sure I go on the track fully prepared.
Also in the afternoon I was quite surprised to see Ant West lingering around our pit garage as I was expecting Martin to be fit for this race. I later found out that Martin had had an x-ray in Spain that showed that he had broken a bone in the top of his hand which was why Westy was in our pit.
Dieter phoned him up on Wednesday afternoon and asked him if he wanted to ride the bike and he checked with the bosses at KTM and they said no problem. His bike is due to be ready at Mugello and he thought it would do him good to get back on a bike!
On Friday morning the weather was very grey but the rain was holding off. I had a look on the internet the night before and it said rain for the whole weekend. 60% chance on Friday, 90% chance on Saturday and again quite a high chance for race day (I cant remember exactly).
For the first session everything felt pretty good. The chassis was good for the first session, just a bit soft on the front but good for the start of the weekend which left me feeling confidant for better things. I was 14th in the first session.
For the afternoon it was a much different story. About 5 minutes before our first qualifying started, it absolutely hammered it down - and I mean hammered it down! Within minutes there was a river flowing down pit lane and the rain wasn’t letting off.
It was a good 10 minutes before one of the Yamaha riders went out. Everybody was stood in pit lane and listened to him as he came past. Every gear was just spinning and there was zero contact between the tyre and tarmac.
On his 2nd lap he again came past spinning up and all of a sudden the spinning noise turned to a scraping noise and I looked at the monitor to see him sliding along.
