On Saturday there was no rain but it was looking like it could come at anytime The morning free practice session went quite well, it started with damp patches and then was fully dry by the end of the session. I was inside the top 15 for most of the practice and was quite happy with the general bike feeling. Wanting a bit more grip from the rear but happy with the front. I ended the session in 16th, looking forward to final qualifying.
For final qualifying the skies looked like they could let loose at anytime so I decided to go out straight away and get a good lap in early. On my second lap it was spitting slightly and I was on a reasonable lap until I came across Heidolf dawdling on the racing line. I finished the lap but it wasn’t much good and now it was difficult to see if the track was getting wet.
I stopped in the box for 5 minutes until the weather had cleared up and then went to try a harder tyre because we were totally uncertain of what tyre I would use if we had a dry race. I did about 5 laps but didn’t like the feeling of the harder tyre. I didn’t have a lot of side grip and couldn’t get on the gas as hard as I liked and was losing too much time. Before I knew it we had 8 minutes left and I put in the softer tyre again to get in two flying laps.
On my fastest lap made a slight mistake which cost me a few tenths and finished up in 18th. I was reasonably happy because the times were close, 0.7secs to 12th, but was slightly worried because we had no direction with what rear tyre to use. I decided that night that if it was dry it was best to stick with what I knew and use the softer tyre. I would have liked to use the harder one but we didn’t have any time to adjust the bike and make it work better with the tyre.
