After running in the bike I knew that this was completely the wrong way to go which was a good thing because then we knew that we had to go in the opposite direction and try and keep more weight on the front. So we took some oil out of the forks so they stay a bit lower in the turns and also dropped the forks back through the yolks.
This was the first immediate improvement that I felt all weekend but we still needed more and tried not to sacrifice any grip on the rear. I finished the session in 13th on a 2mins 5.8secs.
It shows how temperamental these bike are, last year we turned up and the chassis was on rails all weekend and we touched very little. This year it couldn’t have been more opposite but there have been places where we struggled last year, turned up this year and the chassis was good, its swings and roundabouts.
It can be a bit frustrating as well because you can remember exactly what the bike was doing last year and to try and make it do the same thing this year takes a lot more effort and work on the chassis.
For final qualifying we went more in the direction of what we did in the morning, which was more weight on the front of the bike. The changes were improving the bike for the line but with all the weight on the front a bit of chattering started to appear so we had to compromise and find a medium for the both, but finally I started feeling about 80% happy with the bike.
My mechanic told me I needed a tow off another rider preferably some body like Takahashi who was about 0.75 of a second faster. This was because the last part of the circuit is uphill and a good tow off a faster bike can be worth a good half a second.
On my last burst with a fresh tyre I did 1 lap by myself which was a 2mins 4.6secs, then sat up to look for another rider but couldn’t find anybody. My last 4 laps were all 2mins 5.0secs/2mins 5.1secs.
