On Friday morning my normal front suspension was back in the bike and running in new pistons was a real pleasure as is was such a smooth ride compared to the day before! The session also went pretty smooth, I was getting a little chatter which we improved and the whole bike felt pretty good. I did quite a few laps on the tyre that we were pretty sure was going to be our ‘race tyre’ and it felt really good. I did a 2mins 7.9secs and was 11th and feeling confidant for a third row start spot in the afternoon.
Things went just as well in the afternoon qualifying as they did in the morning. I started on an old rear tyre and did quite a few laps just to get a feel for what it would be like in the race. With this I went faster than the day before and pushed myself up to 13th with 15-minutes to go.
When I put a new rear tyre in I did a few mid 2min 7secs and every lap had a bit of traffic. On my final lap I did a 2mins 7.3secs. I was pretty happy with the lap but mis-judged the timing a bit because it was too late for me to come in for another new rear tyre for the last push, so a high 2mins 6secs should have been possible.
Even so, I was where I wanted to be, on the 3rd row, ahead of a couple of factory bikes and just behind Smrz who had been strong all weekend. I was also more consistent than those around me and did 5 laps in the 2mins 7secs where most others only did two so I was feeling good for the race.
The weather predictions all weekend were very hot for the qualifying days and then rain for Saturday which couldn’t have been more true. It was absolutely roasting on Thursday and Friday, completely abnormal for Assen which is usually pretty cold, but then Saturday morning it turned. I was woke up in the hotel at 4, 5 and 6am by huge thunderstorms and lightning. It was still raining hard when I got to the circuit at 8am and expected it to continue for the whole day.
