I had been dosing up on the flu tablets to try and get rid of my cold before I got on the bike again. I was still blowing my nose and clearing my throat but I felt fine generally.
In Qatar there is not a great deal to do apart from one big shopping centre so we went there on Tuesday, but just looked about. On Wednesday we went to the circuit in the morning. It feels really hot there because of all the tarmac giving off heat and the buildings etc. Luckily, for all the mechanics the pit boxes are all air-conditioned but they still sweat! It was quite funny because the team telemetry man, Dave, was just sitting at the computer, studying data and sweat was pouring off him!
I studied all my telemetry from last year just to double check gears and to try and remember things about the circuit as it’s only our second time of going there. After that I walked around the circuit by myself and took a small wet towel that I draped over my head but that dried out by the time I got to about the second corner!
It’s a good circuit Qatar. The only negative is the location because the track gets so dirty, but it’s the same for everybody I suppose. It didn’t look to bad when I walked around it. Last year it started of absolutely terrible, like it was a slippery wet track but it did look a bit better this year and like it had a bit more rubber down which would make things better.
In the first 125 session last year they weren’t even touching their knee it was that slick but it improved a lot as the weekend went on.
On Thursday it was easy to see that the circuit was in much better condition than it was for the first session last year by watching the 125s. When we got out there it felt pretty good grip wise for the first day. It was extremely windy which was causing a few problems in a few of the corners but at least it was cleaner this year so if you did get blown off line there was a bit of grip.
