At the circuit I got all my riding gear out of the flight cases and got it all setup in the little offices that we have there and at all the fly away races. We arrived in Japan at 7.00am there time which was 11pm our time so it was a battle to stay awake all day but important that I did. The weather was pretty hot, much like Malaysia with a lot of humidity. Later in the afternoon James Ellison and I went for a run around the circuit to stay awake.
On Thursday I didn’t really do a great deal. I was still a bit tired and didn’t sleep particularly well in the night. I looked over last years data even though It was a very unsuccessful weekend which ended up with me having a crack in my heel but just for reference points with gears etc.
On Friday morning things didn’t start very well. The chassis was the main problem and I was struggling to turn the bike mid corner. At Japan there is a lot of hard braking and it’s very important that you can get the bike stopped well in the hairpins.
We played around a bit with small effect but I was quite sure that if I could get the feeling I wanted we could go fast as I did 2 years ago at that circuit. It was my best weekend of 2003 and I finished 10th in the race with a few wild-cards in front. Last year couldn’t have been more opposite but I was optimistic of a reversal of fortune!
For the afternoon we made a few more small changes but again without any major result and improvement. I needed at least 1 second over what I was doing and at that moment that felt like the limit. At the end of the session I did a 1min 55.3secs and that was 19th place with a few wildcards ahead.
After the session my chassis mechanic and I had a chat about exactly what the bike was or wasn’t doing and we came up with a solution to try for Saturday. We were going to put 1 harder spring in the front forks and alter the swing arm pivot position so that there is more weight on the rear and less weight on the front because at the minute there was too much weight on the front and it was hard to stop and pushing wide.
