On the first day we only had half a day on track because the 125s had the morning session. As usual, it all felt a bit weird for the first few laps and then I started to get back into the 250 rhythm of things. The first thing I noticed is that this bike seemed to be small, either that or I’ve grown a few inches in four months which I’m pretty sure hasn’t happened! I was struggling to tuck in and to get in the bike properly I had to put my ass right on top of the seat, but after I got used to it, it was a minor problem.
After doing a few laps, my first problem was that the bike was extremely nervous, to the point that when I was on the gas and went over a slight crest or bump in the track it would buck me straight out of the seat. We played around with the chassis geometry and made some good improvements which made the bike much more stable and I was getting more and more comfortable with the bike but we still needed much more.
The session officially ended at 6:00pm but most teams would stop about 5 ish due to the falling track temperature and the shade on the back side of the circuit making it that little bit easier to slip off. We stopped at about 5:15pm and although I wasn’t totally comfortable on the bike I felt we’d made a lot of progress and I was staring to gel with the team.
I was disappointed because I expected to be faster than what I was but knew as soon as I was feeling 100% confident, then the times would come without too much trouble. Although we had managed to stabilise the bike I still felt it was too nervous and I was struggling to trail the brakes into the turns without the front bouncing.
That evening my mechanics took my front forks to Öhlins to be serviced and they found that one of the fork springs was bent, which wouldn’t have helped matters and put my mind at ease for the following day.
