Tel-Emmett-ry: Lloyds British Ducati debut.

In her latest column for Crash.net, Sean Emmett's girlfriend Lauren Carter reviews his debut appearance for Lloyds British Ducati - and reveals that he'll stay with the Supersport team for the rest of the season...

I'm writing this in the boiling heat of the official BSB test at Croft. It is 30 degrees and the riders must be feeling the heat! It is also Sean's first ride for the Lloyds British Ducati team, owned by John Hackett and Phillip Jessop.

We drove up to Mallory last Monday to stay at Michael Rutter's house to cut the journey up a bit as Croft is miles away from Surrey. We went out for the evening with Michael and Sandrine and the next morning set off to Birmingham as Sean had to swerve into Feridax for some leathers, boots and Tommy Hill's crash helmet.

Sean say's that it makes a difference to him to be in the correct gear when riding for a new team, so he is wearing some Clover leathers that Martin Jessop was originally going to wear but changed makes, so my job on Wednesday was to un-pick Martin's name and number off the leathers which took me forever!

We went for a meal with the team on Tuesday night and then to the track Wednesday morning, where we heard that there had been a huge break-in the night before and about ?500,000 worth of stuff had been stolen! Including both of Shakey's Rizla Suzuki bikes, Red Bull Honda's wheels, plasma TVs and plenty of expensive tools.

Sean managed to get out in the last hour of the Superbike test on Wednesday and rode a Supersport bike for the first time in 14 years. It was great of Stuart Higgs to let Sean go out as he had not been on a Supersport bike for so long or ridden on treaded tyres and wanted to 'make friends' with the bike.

The Thursday test was successful and Sean made some progressive changes throughout the sessions, enabling him to go quicker every time he went out.

There were smiles all round and the team were pleased with Sean's feedback and progress, subsequently Sean will be riding for the team for the rest of the season. Sean is peaking and is happy he's with a really friendly and well organised team.

So my next column will be from the Knockhill round in Scotland on 16th July - look out for Sean on the Lloyds British Ducati Supersport bike, I'm sure it will be an exciting weekend, yet nerve wracking for me!

Lauren x