About half a week before I flew to Japan, Hopper came to our place for a bit of supermoto and karting. He left his bike at our house from the time that he came last year and it has been parked there ever since. It was a good day, the weather was nice and we both did a fair few laps and at a good pace.
It’s good to have somebody else to ride with for a change and makes it more fun. It’s also very good training, probably about the best thing we can do for our sport. Our track isn’t mickey mouse, but you are always muscling the bike around and you get no rest and have to be 100% concentrated and that‘s what makes it so tough.
At the end of the day I did a 41.6secs which is the fastest I’ve ever been around there and John did a 42.8secs which equalled his best time from last year, but he was more consistent this year. Just as we were finishing up I wanted to have one more crack and get under a 41.5.
The lap started really well and was very fast for about the 1st third of the lap and then I lost the front on our fastest corner of the track, a long right-hander. No damage but gutted because that was THE lap! Ah well, another day.
I flew to Japan on Monday evening and the flight was an absolute nightmare. Normally you can get a direct flight from London to Tokyo which takes about 11 hours, albeit a bit more expensive than the one we had but not that much more. I left from Birmingham airport, 1 ½ hour flight to Frankfurt where I met up with the team.
Then I had 2 hours stop over in Frankfurt and then a 12 hour flight to Singapore. Then we had a 7 hour stop over in Singapore, then a 6 ½ hour flight from Singapore to Tokyo. From the time I got to Birmingham airport to when we arrived at the track in Motegi I worked out that it took 34 hours!
