Hectic GP weekend

Then, like every team, I spend Thursday afternoon setting up the awnings and hospitality and all that kind of stuff. 

 

Thursday then brings ‘Mechanics Night' when we meet up for some beers and a catch-up! 

 

Friday sees technical control when the bikes are weighed, noise tested and the frames get tagged. 

 

You are only allowed two chassis at a GP so tagging prevents any cheating. 

 

Saturday brings pre-qualifying then the qualifying race in the afternoon, which in Bulgaria was good for us as Jake finished third.

 

Sunday is an early start for warm-up then the two heats.

 

After such good qualifying in Bulgaria, Jake struggled in the first moto with the wrong tyre choice, as the track got so hard so quickly. 

 

For the second moto we changed to a harder rear tyre, which seemed to do the trick as he was running a comfortable second behind Tommy, before losing the front end on a watered part of the track. So we didn't get the results we were hoping for.

 

The boat back to Italy wasn't until Tuesday night, so after the second moto I stripped down Jake's bike, cleaned, serviced and greased everything and treated it to a new frame. 

 

I got to bed about 1am so that was kind of a long day. 

 

At eight the next morning I was up to finish the bike with new plastics and stickers and it was time to clean the awning, pack everything away and head off through Greece to catch the ferry for the Italian GP. 

 

On the boat I finally got chance to read the Valentino Rossi autobiography.

 

It gave me a good insight into how his life and the life of an MXGP racer is so similar and how his relationship with his mechanics was so important with his mental preparation. 

 

This taught me a lot and I learned some things that I can use to help Jake. 

 

Italy started the way we both hoped. 

 

Pre-qualifying was good and the massive holeshot in qualifying a bonus. 

 

We received a prototype tyre to test on Sunday morning, which worked really well. 

 

The first heat was pretty good with a fourth, but heat two ended with Jake hyper-extending his wrist and unable to continue. 

 

So it was a 15-hour drive back to the workshop where it was time to crate up everything and ship it to Mexico. 

 

When sending a bike in a flight case you can only ship the absolute essentials. Only able to send one bike, I packed an engine, suspension, wheels and plastics. You really take the race truck for granted as I can normaly build a complete bike from spares! 

 

I'm sure after that after the Mexico and Brazil trip I will have lots of stories to tell you guys. 

 

Speak to you in four weeks.