On Tuesday I woke up and looked out of the window and it was bright sunshine. Also out of the hotel there was a really nice view onto the beach and hotel swimming pool. I hadn’t had time to look at the hote,l but that morning I did a bit of exploring and it’s one of the nicest I’ve ever stayed in, I was a bit spoilt to be honest! You know it’s good when a few of the
MotoGP riders are staying there. I had breakfast with
Colin Edwards and his assistant Pete which is always funny. I could listen to Colin and his stories all day!
That afternoon I went into Doha town with Colin and Pete to the shopping centre there. We just mooched around there for a few hours, bought nothing and then went back to the hotel. When I got back I played beach volleyball with my mechanics which we lost. And then we thought we’d try football, which we also lost! Before we knew it the day was over. I had dinner with Pete and Colin again and showed Colin a book my best mate bought me called ‘The Essential Book Of Foreign Insults’…which was possibly a bad move!
The book has every English swearword/insulting phrase you can think of and then it is translated on the opposite page in Italian, French, Spanish and German. Extremely handy for the paddock! Also in the back there are a few phrases for some of the more not so widely spoken languages. Like Greek, Portuguese, Russian etc, but the worst/best at that moment in time was the Arabic! That’s when it went downhill. Over dinner Colin was reeling off a few Arabic insults, not too loud but if somebody wanted to listen they could have probably heard things like 'kiss my ass' etc!
On Wednesday I went to the circuit quite early in the morning. I walked a lap of the track and then talked to the mechanics about what we can do to help me get more comfortable on the bike. The team had bought some 15mm extended handlebars, where as before I had 10mm. And we also had a couple of other ideas to try - bar positioning and taking off the double layer seat foam that I used in
Jerez.
