TESTING TIMES

Another early start on the Friday morning saw us pulling into Donington Park around 7.30am. Luckily we found a half empty garage – usually they’re all taken by that time – which was just as well for us, because the weather was bitterly cold again and the wind made things feel much worse.

Ritchie makes a few adjustments before his first session

We’re still running with a standard engine, which is a bit disappointing, due to the late arrival of the new Wiseco piston kit for the rebuild. However, all track time is good time, so Ritchie was fairly happy to be out on a circuit that he admits is not one of his strongest.

All the morning practice sessions were short and in quick succession. It was good to be on the go without too much waiting around and after two sessions Ritchie soon found his rhythm.

The session after lunch was probably the best of the day and then with one session to go it started spitting rain. The tarmac at Donington seemed to turn to ice almost immediately and all the riders made quick decisions to come in and change tyres.

We had the wets in and then it stopped again. We waited a while and then decided to put the dry tyres back on. With two minutes to go before the last session commenced, it started raining again, so we decided to call it a day.

Warmers on in a cold garage

Day two started out dry again and we put new tyres on the bike. Ritchie decided to go for a Metzeler road tyre because there seems to be a delay in getting hold of the slicks he wants to use. Still, the tread was well worth testing and to a certain degree improved the way the bike handled.

Worth mentioning our old pal Mark Wright from Holbeach tyres, it was great to see him again and have a chat about old times on the GSXR600. Big thanks to him for helping out with the racing rubber.

Later on it started to rain again. Ritchie had a decent session on wets and was showing good pace as his old skills for riding in the wet started to return.

Unfortunately in the last session he lost grip at McCleans and ended up in the mud and gravel. He looked liked he’d been motocrossing again; we had to sponge him down from head to foot. The bike took a bit of a whack but we had the unpainted fairing on, so we weren’t too upset. The R&G crash protectors took most of the hit, saving quite a lot of damage. Once we cleaned away the mud and took off the fairing the bike it didn’t look too bad.

We may have had a long cold weekend, but we learned quite a lot about the bike the circuit and the things we need to do for our first race at Brands Hatch.

Looking forward to it now.