During the race the sky clouded over and the temperature dropped a couple of degrees which might have caused the tyre problems but at the finish I was very happy with 16 points because it looks like the championship is wide open. Also it's the first time I've completed the race distance on the Aprilia and we are learning more and more all the time.
Normally it takes the first three races for everybody to sort themselves and the bikes out. After that you start to work out who are the real championship contenders and who to keep an eye out for. I pulled back seven points on the world championship leader and I'm 18 points down which is not so bad after the disappointment of Qatar. Twenty three riders have scored points in the opening two races which meant eight more, including myself, opened their account in
Jerez. It's very open at the moment and you can't rule out the likes of world champion Gabor Talmacsi who's had a bad start with mechanical problems.
I added another nice Tissott watch to my collection which was presented to me in the pole setting press conference on Saturday night. In Qatar I was on my own to receive the watch because of the change of schedule for the night race but at Jerez it was back to normal. It was great to be sitting alongside
Jorge Lorenzo,
Dani Pedrosa and
Colin Edwards who had qualified on the front row for the
MotoGP race and Colin as always was good to listen to.
My Mum, Dad and sister came to the presentation which was nice for them although the security people would not let them in at first. I've always told them they look a little bit dodgy.
I'm looking forward to the third round of the world championship at Estoril in Portugal in just under a couple of weeks time. I'm really doing my homework on the track because I struggled there last year. I will sit down with the team and work out how we can transfer our brilliant qualifying to the actual race. We will focus specifically on the race and we have a good feeling about the whole weekend coming up.
