On Wednesday, Casey (Stoner) and I did a couple of laps on the scooters to go and suss out the new modifications to the circuit and just have a mess around. The changes to the circuit looked OK, but there was nothing wrong with the original Assen.
Casey and I then did a bit of motocross on the circuit infield with the scooters which were getting slower and slower and starting to smell after a severe thrashing, so we thought we better call it at that - we have to entertain ourselves somehow!
On Thursday morning the session started in not really a particularly good way. I ran in new pistons for 4 laps and even just taking it pretty steady the bike was chattering its brains out and tank-slapping like crazy. I presumed I must have got a dodgy front tyre which can sometimes happen but not very often.
I pulled in the box and we changed the front tyre and made a couple of small tweaks on the front suspension. I went back out and it felt better but still very light on the front and giving a weird feeing. I was riding around thinking, "well this feels pretty crap" but we weren’t a million miles away time wise and knew that when we could iron out the chattering we could be fast. I was 16th at the end of the session with a 2mins 9.3secs.
In the afternoon, on my very first lap, I almost lost the front in the tight left hairpin onto the back straight. Then three corners later the same sort of thing happened and the bike was just chattering like hell - but only in the left corners. I thought 'surely I can’t have two dodgy tyres in one day'.
I did one more lap just to make sure of what exactly was going on and again in the tight left I was pretty much cruising around and losing the front so I picked the bike up and ran off. I wobbled around the rest of the lap and then when I got back to the box told the mechanics that there is something seriously wrong with the front of the bike.
