Yamaha Italia’s Troy Corser tells all about his difficult weekend at the weather hit Valencia…..
Hi guys,
What a weekend! The wet conditions at Valencia really put a spanner in the works.
The first day we had a full dry session and the bike was working pretty well. We had a pretty good set up in the dry, but in the wet we were really lacking in side grip from the tyre. Normally in the wet you expect to lose the rear a little bit on the exit when you are accelerating but this is actually off the throttle before you even open the throttle. I’d just roll it into a corner and it was just not gripping.
We went pretty much full circle trying to get more grip from the tyre in this area. We’ve tried everything, up, down, hard, soft, stuff that really should have made a big difference to the feel of the tyres but it wasn’t making too much difference.
I think the combination of the grip from the circuit and the grip from the tyre combined was just making it very difficult to feel comfortable, that was the problem. We had to make a lap and go round but for me it was not comfortable to be out of the seat and sliding and nearly crashing which I don’t like in the wet or the dry. On Saturday you had to ride that way, really on the edge and taking a bit of a risk to do a good lap time, so I was happy enough to be on the front row.
The first race started well and I led for the opening five laps, Ruben went past, and then my foot began to slip off the footpegs. There seemed to be some oil on the pegs and I was concerned that some of it was going onto the rear tyre and that made me take things a bit cautiously - as I didn’t want to crash. I had to take care and make sure I brought it home okay.
In race two, I had rear tyre problems after about only three laps and I was getting quite a few slides. It was hard to keep going, but I didn’t want to pull in. everything was the same as race one, I don’t know what went wrong. I need some good luck!
