Day 2… Snetterton Track Day

So it was a late start actually; we got on the road but were all on the same page… don’t rush, 4 days here, let’s not bust our balls. We got there, did maybe just one dry session; rode out with Paul my team-mate and it was really cool you know, we just had a nice ride out, built the speed up, got a kick on, and got it on the stop towards the end of the session… and then boom, the fucking rain came down, and no one likes rain right, you know that. I don’t, its not like I’m the next Chris Vermeulen, thats for sure.. but do you know what i just thought to myself, get the wet suit on get wet tyres on and get out… And to be fair, I was driving miss daisy a bit at first, but I suddenly realised where the grip was, where the standing water was, got it on the stop, and come the end we were moving. The guys here declared open pit lane cos there was so few people going out, that it was a bit of  waste of a time calling the session, so I was just going round until Mark Hanna gave me the come in sign… which is no more than a furious waving over the pit wall! We carried out a few minor suspensions adjustments (see Mark’s comments below) and as i left the pits i turned the traction control up one and really got it working quite well… i really got comfortable. I’m not the next rain master thats for sure, but i fucking buzzed, i enjoyed that as much as a red hot fucking rubber blistering track, i got my teeth into it and we’ve got a long weekend ahead, it ain’t gonna be dry, so we got out and got in amongst it; man up, get out there and get in.

Peace, Flinty.

For Team Traction Control, these past 2 days have been very successful both on and off track; for both rider and machine. We’ve been very lucky; having a bit of rain and a bit of sun so we’ve managed to set the bike up in both cases… and now if we have a wet or dry race we’ve got a bit of a base setting to go to. For the dry setting, hopefully tomorrow we’ll have a bit more nice weather to try for a better base setting; as yesterday, at Brands, Keith was riding really well; but I think theres still a lot more to come out of him. I think he continued his riding, his confidence, into today with the wet weather. I was absolutely over the moon about what i saw today on the bike and i think if we have another wet day tomorrow we’ll get the bike maybe a little better for it again,…and i think you could probably see Keith go a couple of seconds quicker. Today we tried to make the bike… well the word would be ‘plush’ for him… so it’s not such a harsh feeling,  like in the dry when you go into the corner, you want big support from the suspension cos you’re going so fast you don’t want it to dive, hit the bottom of the forks, hit the bottom of the bump stop and feel really hard. In that case it’s quite easy to lose the front;  going into a corner it dives and… bang… What i didn’t want Keith doing was to get that feeling in the wet. So what we did was loosen the suspension up quite a lot. On the front and on the rear; by taking 2 clicks of compression off… 2 clicks of rebound.. and 2.5 millimetres of preload off the spring, just to let the bike sit down a little bit better in the wet, as we had torrential rain today and we tried to get more weight onto the floor… more weight onto the floor is more grip onto the floor. But as Keith speeded up throughout the day in the wet, at quite a fast rate, I was getting a little concerned… so I dragged him back in to stiffen the suspension back up a little as I thought he was going a bit too fast for the setting on the bike… so now he could go a little bit harder on the brakes and it would give him a bit more support. And I think talking to Keith, getting the feedback of him… I feel he’s quite happy and confident with what he’s riding but I really do feel that tomorrow, if we have another wet day, he could certainly drop another 2 seconds. Easy.

Mark.