1st of many?
My 1st “Blog” - a little later than planned but hey I’ve been busy!
Firstly please do not ask me what a “Blog” is, as I don’t really know – except you are currently reading one? The plan is to regularly update it with some background to our team and what happens during the season.
At best it should be interesting, worst it will just be a bit of therapy for me!
Get yourself comfortable, as this is a long one!
As I said we have been very busy since returning from round 2 in Oz.
Back home for about a week – just enough time to get over jet lag - then load up the truck and head to Valencia for our pre-season testing (after 2 rounds!?!).
Having only raced at 2 of the 13 tracks on this year’s calendar I picked Valencia as one of our 3 designated test tracks - as it’s a tricky, technical track that virtually all the supersport grid has raced at, and done thousands of miles testing there.
Unfortunately the beautiful Yorkshire weather didn’t follow us down. And out of the scheduled 3-day test we got only 3hours of dry track time. Still we got chance to meet up with the lads from Superbike Magazine doing a 600 Supersport Group test – Cheers for the garage guys!
Weather for the following week……not a cloud………. Scorchio….Pah!
As the official SBK Winter test was only a week later, the plan was to take it easy and catch up with some work on the bike etc. But following a trip into Valencia and some toe-rag pinching all our passports a trip to the British Consulate in Alicante was on the cards. Silver lining this time was getting chance to catch up with my cousin Nicky & her son Lucas who lives in the city.
Good old British efficiency saw us off with emergency passport and time to spare before heading back to Circuit for the test.
With nearly a full supersport grid testing and plenty of learning done with the 06 suspension the test went well. The last of the 3days ended with me setting the 12th fastest time of the day and 14th overall. The time was only 0.7 off the best race lap in 2005. But Charpentier was up to his usual trick of moving the goal posts by a second or two!
Back home for another week and off again this time to the second official test at Misano.
Again a lot more learnt and another great track – it has a good flow and the series of fast lefts onto the back straight are something else. The last one is flat out in 6th on a supersport bike and with your knee on the ground the data logging was showing just over 145mph. The first session I hated it – by the end of the test I loved it.
This time we came away 1.1 seconds off the lap record, and in 12th fastest on day 2.
After doing over 140 laps we took it steady the next day before setting off for round 3 back in Valencia next weekend.
Still got chance to nip to the circuit at Imola as we were passing. The F1 race is there next weekend and the teams were already there setting up. Still thanks to the circuit manager (Molte grazie signore Pasquale) we managed to blag a couple of laps around on my road bike (bicycle). The Italians don’t seem to mess about when it comes to building racetracks. They also don’t seem to mind living next to them – the track at Imola is in the centre of a town! Environmental health would have a field day if it was in blighty!
Which brings me up to date – here somewhere in the south of France – on the way to Valencia.
Ciao, arrivederchi, adios, ta ra & all that,
TT
Firstly please do not ask me what a “Blog” is, as I don’t really know – except you are currently reading one? The plan is to regularly update it with some background to our team and what happens during the season.
At best it should be interesting, worst it will just be a bit of therapy for me!
Get yourself comfortable, as this is a long one!
As I said we have been very busy since returning from round 2 in Oz.
Back home for about a week – just enough time to get over jet lag - then load up the truck and head to Valencia for our pre-season testing (after 2 rounds!?!).
Having only raced at 2 of the 13 tracks on this year’s calendar I picked Valencia as one of our 3 designated test tracks - as it’s a tricky, technical track that virtually all the supersport grid has raced at, and done thousands of miles testing there.
Unfortunately the beautiful Yorkshire weather didn’t follow us down. And out of the scheduled 3-day test we got only 3hours of dry track time. Still we got chance to meet up with the lads from Superbike Magazine doing a 600 Supersport Group test – Cheers for the garage guys!
Weather for the following week……not a cloud………. Scorchio….Pah!
As the official SBK Winter test was only a week later, the plan was to take it easy and catch up with some work on the bike etc. But following a trip into Valencia and some toe-rag pinching all our passports a trip to the British Consulate in Alicante was on the cards. Silver lining this time was getting chance to catch up with my cousin Nicky & her son Lucas who lives in the city.
Good old British efficiency saw us off with emergency passport and time to spare before heading back to Circuit for the test.
With nearly a full supersport grid testing and plenty of learning done with the 06 suspension the test went well. The last of the 3days ended with me setting the 12th fastest time of the day and 14th overall. The time was only 0.7 off the best race lap in 2005. But Charpentier was up to his usual trick of moving the goal posts by a second or two!
Back home for another week and off again this time to the second official test at Misano.
Again a lot more learnt and another great track – it has a good flow and the series of fast lefts onto the back straight are something else. The last one is flat out in 6th on a supersport bike and with your knee on the ground the data logging was showing just over 145mph. The first session I hated it – by the end of the test I loved it.
This time we came away 1.1 seconds off the lap record, and in 12th fastest on day 2.
After doing over 140 laps we took it steady the next day before setting off for round 3 back in Valencia next weekend.
Still got chance to nip to the circuit at Imola as we were passing. The F1 race is there next weekend and the teams were already there setting up. Still thanks to the circuit manager (Molte grazie signore Pasquale) we managed to blag a couple of laps around on my road bike (bicycle). The Italians don’t seem to mess about when it comes to building racetracks. They also don’t seem to mind living next to them – the track at Imola is in the centre of a town! Environmental health would have a field day if it was in blighty!
Which brings me up to date – here somewhere in the south of France – on the way to Valencia.
Ciao, arrivederchi, adios, ta ra & all that,
TT
posted by Tom Tunstall at 9:12 AM
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