For three quarters of the morning session I was inside the top 12 but came to that point where to go faster the chassis needed adjusting to help chattering problems. At the end of the session we didn’t manage to find any big improvements to help the chattering and I ended up 17th with a 1min 37.9secs.
For the afternoon we made a few extra tweaks with the chassis to try and help the chattering. I was only getting it in 3 places, all the medium speed left handers, turn 2, 5 and over the top at Lucchi Heights but that was enough. There were no immediate differences and it seemed like there was going to be no easy way around it just making slight chassis changes. At the end of the session we started to find some direction with the chassis but not enough.
For the last 15 minutes I came in for a new rear tyre, and made a slight suspension change. When I went back out I was struggling to change gear as the quick shifter was not working properly so I had to change gear with the normal 'back-off' the throttle, road bike style.
This was costing me quite bit of time because it upsets the bike and at Phillip Island it’s important that the bike is stable. I did my fastest lap on the last, 1min 36.7secs, it was nowhere near enough but I stayed optimistic because I knew the shifter problem was costing me at least ½ second. Overnight we thought about the chassis, and how to get more from it.
Last year more or less from the start of the weekend the chassis was stable and we had a good balance for the different types of corners on the circuit. I remember we had a bit of chattering on Friday but we managed to get rid of it and had no further problems and it was a sweet weekend. It shows how temperamental these bikes can be and the chassis I was on last year was a '98 and you would think well out of date but it seemed to work well at some places.
