I struggled a little to learn the track, but it's the type of lap that takes a while to learn anyway. Just how I'd imagine it hard to learn Suzuka. It was not easy because the track wasn't in any of the
MotoGP playstation games I had either! Before China I'm going to have to invest in some
F1 games as they'll have Shanghai in there to have a go at...
Alberto Puig comes down to help us in our garage quite a bit, but he lets Raul (Jara) do his thing because Raul is really my mentor. Alberto knows that Raul knows what he's doing so he lets him guide me. When something is necessary Alberto says it, but when it's not, he just points me at Raul. When Alberto says something it's not very long, but it is certainly to the point. There are no ifs, buts, and maybes with him!
The travel thing has been all over the place so far, but it's good to get the bad luck out of the way early on to hopefully leave us a little luckier later on. The trip back from
Jerez took forever with delays and mess ups… but I'm learning that it's part of it… The way back from Qatar was quite a wander. I had a good isle seat on the plane, but there was this big Military guy behind me who didn't let me put my seat back, and it was freezing cold near the air conditioning! Fortunately it was a night flight so we were pretty wacked out after race day.
The weekend between Turkey and China will see me at home in Oxfordshire. I hope to get the forks back for my Supermoto so I'll be out and about. As long as I'm out on a motorbike that'll be good. I've also got to catch up on some school work too. I'm interested in Media Studies at school so I'm working hard on some assessment work where I'm making a short film.
China and Le mans back to back are going to be very difficult with regards to the body clock having a bit of a bashing so I'm keeping my fitness up and sleep in so I can get on top of what is going to be a very busy schedule. It's ironic that for my first year it is apparently the hardest schedule for years, but it's the same for everyone.
Head down and throttle open it's going to be.
Bradley Smith
