MIST Suzuki Racing

Valencia, Spain – Testing

Posted on April 15, 2006 by Mike Edwards

Chris Northover, 14/04/06 – 15/04/06
Racedays.Net Academy

Viva Lâ€™Espagne

Wednesday morning, 9:00am. After joining up with the Bond contingent at Dover, we boarded the ferry on our mission to Valencia. In record time, they were sick of my endless chattering by approximately 9:02am! The boat was fun, we won a whole Â£1 on the quiz machine which I was delighted with. Then Matt pointed out weâ€™d spent more than a tenner trying to win, dammit!

Once off the ferry and on the road the journey seemed to take forever so Matt and I passed the hours away by seeing if it was possible to talk the fastest lap of Valencia! I also indulged in the mindless pap that is sudoku and feel very ashamed to admit it!

Come Friday and we finally got the chance to ride in our first session on track, exciting enough after the winter lay off, but with the added bonus of following a certain Mr. McWilliams of GP fame. Within a few laps we were starting to get a feel for the lines around the challenging Ricardo Tormo Circuit. After the first session Matt and I were separated on fastest laps by something like 5/100ths of a second! Throughout the remaining sessions we gradually got faster with Matt getting down to a lap time of 1min 47seconds. Saturday morning gave the opportunity for some video work, with Jeremy riding round with us filming from behind then from in front. This gave us the opportunity to see not only our own riding styles, but also to see the difference between the lines we should be on and the lines we were on! It was a real eye opener leading to comments like:

â€œI could have sworn I was closer to the apex than that!â€

and

â€œNah that canâ€™t be me riding, I didnâ€™t brake there, summat wrong with your camera mate!â€.

So determined to make a better job of meeting apexes and riding the correct lines, we continued to lap, under the watchful eye of Jeremy who was on hand at all times to give tips and pointers enabling us to get the lap times lower. We finished the day both on 1:47 lap times (although Matt was a few tenths of a second faster but Iâ€™m not going to admit that!). We spent Sunday watching the other riders, especially the Stiggy Motorsports team rider who was going into the first turn so sideways there was blue smoke from his rear tyre, mental!

Monday

Cimbed the mountain (ok, hill) behind the track in the pouring rain and named it â€œMount CGâ€. Got very wet. And cold. And got blisters on my feet. Should have thought more carefully about that!

Tuesday

Climbed â€œMount CGâ€ again, in the sunshine this time!

Bought some â€œdouble pluggiesâ€ (thatâ€™s sandals to most people!) and did loads of revision (ahem) for uni work.

Wednesday

Gave Mount CG a miss, revised instead (hope my lecturers read this!!).

Went to find the sea/beach with Roger. Now, youâ€™d have thought it would be just a case of driving to Valencia (which is on the coast) and then aiming for the big blue wobbly thing. Not so. Two and a half hours later after the umpteenth CG DetourÂ tm, we gave up and headed back to the circuit.

Posted in 2006, Chris Northover, Testing, Valencia | Leave a comment

Valencia, Spain – Testing

Posted on April 15, 2006 by Mike Edwards

Matt Bond, 14/04/06 – 15/04/06
Racedays.Net Academy

Summary

This was the first time Iâ€™d done any kind of race school and it really did surprise me just how much I learnt over the two days of testing. The school was really friendly and welcoming throughout and the experience was invaluable. Iâ€™d definitely book myself in for another if I could afford it!

Day One â€“ Friday

After the quick briefing session it was onto the track for Chris and me, and the plan for us, to follow ex-MotoGP start Jeremy McWilliams! Just being in the same pit was an experience, but riding with him was something else. First session was a bit of downer as the bike just wouldnâ€™t handle, I just couldnâ€™t get the thing to turn, but fortunately this was solved once we got back into pit lane. Second session and the bike felt much better. It was just easier to ride and felt a lot more comfortable. Another session with Jeremy showing us the lines helped me get my mind in gear and showed me just where the time and speed can be gained. It was about now that I realised just how fast the circuit was when Mr McWilliams decided to ride round the outside of me on the sweeping final left hander, and I thought I was going fast! A new set of tyres made all the difference for the third session, and I began to pick up the pace and I even had my first proper backing it in and power sliding happenings half way through the day. Further sessions through the day helped me get my a better feel for the lines and a few words of McWilliams helped figure out some of the more technical sections on the track. Overall the day went well and being slightly quicker than Chris was a bit of a bonus too!

Day Two â€“ Saturday

After a great first day I was hoping to get a bit more speed on the second dayâ€™s activities. First time out and it just felt so quick, I think overnight my mind forgot to tell me to brake at the last turn as I took a slight excursion onto the grass, fortunately keeping it upright. Next up was a video taping session with Jeremy McWilliams and it was great to see just what I was doing and how I could improve. It taught me a lot about getting the lines right and standing the bike up out of the corners. A quick review of the entire video helped immensely in understanding what had to be done to get on the pace. It defiantly helped put the theory into practice and helped me get a lot more comfortable at a much faster pace than Iâ€™d have expected. With the tyres on the bike beginning to deteriorate pretty dramatically we decided to call it a day and I just sat and watched the quick boys put in some ridiculously fast laps, whilst also getting ideas for the races and seeing which new lines I could try when I got back on track.

Conclusion

What an awesome experience! Canâ€™t say just how good the academy was! I loved every second of it. Big thanks to Gerry and the Racedays.Net crew and a huge thank you to Jeremy McWilliams for all his expert advice. Another shout out and thank you to Steve Jordan for setting the suspension up for me (yet again)!

Posted in 2006, Matt Bond, Testing, Valencia | Leave a comment

Valencia, Spain – Testing

Posted on April 8, 2006 by Mike Edwards

15/03/06 – Testing At Valencia With Racedays.net

After some long delays for parts and then a mad rush to get everything fitted so the bikes could be set up on the dyno the long trek to Valencia began. Needless to say that the journey was much longer than we anticipated although I suspect it is something that we would soon get used to. Not sure whether that is a god thing or a bad one but…

The bike still had to have the bodywork fitted at the circuit and we hadn’t had the chance to fit some fresh rubber so it was a busy introduction to the season. We decided to not fit the stickers to the fairings until after the testing as we didn’t have many spares with us and didn’t want to tempt fate. The Racedays.net set up was excellent with loads of advice for Matt and Chris from Jeremy McWilliams.

It was easy to forget that aside form the abortive couple of sessions at a cold Cadwell Park this was the first time Matt had ever ridden a 600cc bike and the first time in ages that he had needed to learn a new circuit. With lots of help and encouragement plus the excellent tuition from Jeremy both riders were soon picking up the pace.

It was interesting for me to see how they both rode and learn how they learnt things during the two days. Having worked with Matt before it was encouraging how quickly he got on with the bike but however fast he went Chris was always just a fraction of a second behind. We had all expected Chris to be much faster on a 600 than Matt, initially at least, but when the handling on his R6 from 2005 could only be described as challenging it was almost as if he was having to learn to ride a bike for the first time.