Sunday morning was just as bright as the other 2 days. In morning warm-up I ran in new pistons and, as normal, ran with a full tank of fuel. The full tank made the chassis feel even worse; it was pushing on into the corner entry because of the extra weight.
Usually for a race we need between 21 and 25 litres in the tank to complete the race, depending on the circuit, so it’s easy to understand how it can upset the bike. 20 odd litres is a lot of weight, where as in qualifying we run with about 5-8 litres. When I stopped in the pit box for the engine mechanic to check all was ok my chassis mechanic added a turn of preload which stiffens up the front and normally helps with a full tank. It helped it slightly but still the general bike feeling was not good and I was just going to have to live with it for the race.
My start was initially ok, I got away well and then got a bit of a rough graunch feeling and bogged slightly but even so it wasn’t so bad. Within a few laps I knew that I couldn’t run the pace of the others around me. I was fighting the bike to get it to turn on the entry and the on the gas on the exit but it wasn’t making any difference.
I started to lose touch with the group in front which was a group around 11th place and I was in 15th. My team-mate passed me which showed me the difference in a bike that was handling and one that wasn’t. It didn’t take him long before he had a gap on me and he also had more grunt than me. My engine was like it was the whole day on Saturday, pretty gutless.
So that was it, I just rode around in the last half of the race, there was no way I could fight for anything better than the position that I was in. I was seriously gutted. It’s strange because it’s such a contrast to the race last year and the test there this year which went like a dream.
