I also played a lot of table football or "foosball" in Casey’s hospitality. I’m glad to say that both Casey and I are coming on leaps and bounds! We always end up playing Casey’s hospitality staff or his mechanics who are all Italian and are practically born onto the things! At first they used to hammer us but race by race we are getting closer, all we both need now is a bit more co-ordination with our left hands along with a bit more power and we'll be a force to be reckoned with! It’s good fun and passes the time well.
I will continue to sit tight for a little longer but now it really is getting to the point that I need to start looking elsewhere and at this stage of my career I feel my best chance in 250 GPs has been taken away, so to salvage something out of this year perhaps gaining some four-stroke experience would be constructive.
I realise I can keep waiting as there is always a chance that a 250cc rider could get injured, which has already been the case with Heidolf, but all the lesser funded teams require a budget to race, which is something I am not in a position to do.
Obviously
MotoGP would be my ultimate goal. I feel I have enough grand prix experience to be considered, but the opportunities in this class are very limited. I would really like a test on one of these machines to show what I could do as I recently tested a 1000cc four-stroke in Misano and felt comfortable with the physical size of the machine.
Obviously the Porto ride was up for grabs and my name was put forward there. I didn’t fit the bill too well for that and apart from that I’d probably fit the bike a lot worse! I’d have definitely given it a shot but I think it would have been very difficult because of my size. The Honda, although competitive, over the past few years has become very compact to suit riders such as
Dani Pedrosa.
Anyway, I heard today (Thursday) that my ex-team mate Martin Cardenas has got the ride. He fit’s the bill well for Repsol being South American and besides that has been having a good year so fair play to him.
For now until Donington I’m gonna be at home. I’m not going to Assen this weekend and it will be pretty crap watching a GP from the settee, I haven’t done that for over four years. I’ll carry on training and doing my usual stuff at home. I’m not ready for going down the job centre just yet! Hopefully we will get something resolved ASAP and I’ll be back on a bike in the not too distant.
Last night I had an idea about what I can do for Riders For Health at
Donington. Obviously there is the auction that I could donate something for but lets face it, 250 gear doesn’t fetch that much money and especially with the year I’ve had so far I’ll probably be paying people to take it off me! Anyway, my plan is this…
