The engine I don’t really have any control over as it is the engine mechanics job to take the engine as far as it can go and still be safe, but I can relay the chassis problems to my chassis mechanic who then can try many different things with the suspension or chassis geometry.
The engine felt OK but I was having a problem changing gear and was having to shift earlier than normal which was unnecessarily taking away my concentration as I was having to think about this problem too much. It seems to be a common problem that we seem to get a lot and have not yet found a way around it, which is a bit frustrating.
On Sunday morning it was wet but it had stopped raining as we got to the circuit. There was thick fog around the circuit which meant that the warm up sessions were delayed by about 1hr by which time the track had begun to dry.
By the time we went out for warm-up, it was getting quite dry and we started the session on full wets which was a mistake. This wouldn’t have been such a problem but the wet tyres I was trying were a new, very sticky, softer compound from Dunlop which are really for fully wet conditions.
I ran in new pistons for the first 5 laps and could feel that the tyres were already shot as the track was 75% dry but there was no time to change. It was quite funny in a way because I was going up the start/finish straight bolt upright and just having tank-slappers because the rubber was so soft and just moving around everywhere. I finished the session in a belting 24th place but wasn’t too worried about that!
I was pretty nervous before the race which is pretty normal if I qualify well! My start was very bad and I couldn’t really understand why, because everything felt good. I felt on the limit of the bike, just slipping the clutch enough to grip which is usually a near perfect start but I didn’t seem to be going anywhere fast. I went from 11th to 16th and then managed to lose 1 more place back to 17th.
