When you start to make the bike like a Harley and more comfortable to ride, by making things longer etc., it makes it more aerodynamic - but you start to lose feeling with it. Longer rear footrests, extra seat padding, extended and wider bars all makes it more difficult to get a feeling with the bike and know exactly what the bike is doing.
On Thursday I started the first free practice session by running in the bike and new brake pads for 3 laps. After running in I did a few laps to get a feel for the bike and it felt even smaller than
Jerez with the longer bars on! This was because the angle of the bars had been brought back and it made a huge difference. I again stopped and we widened the angle a bit. It felt much more comfortable for me but not as good to turn the bike.
On about my third lap out of pits I lost the front in the left handed second corner. I don’t really know what happened. About three-quarters of the way through the corner, just as I was starting to get on the gas, the front folded on me and went past the point of no return. I’d have been able to get back on, had the bar not been snapped. That was the only real damage and I was fine but a bit annoyed because it was a pretty pathetic crash and so early on in a weekend. I got back to the box and then my bike followed about 5 minutes later. My mechanics quickly replaced the broken bits on the bike and I managed to get back out with about 10 minutes left. I stayed out until the end of the session and I was struggling to get any feeling back from the bike. I ended the session in 21st.
To cut a long story short the remaining practices and qualifying were extremely difficult. On Friday we continued to fiddle with the bike positioning and weren’t really getting very far. The problem is that all of this should have been sorted out long ago in testing, whereas at the GPs there is limited track time and everything is done in much more of a rush.
