Positivity. A great day at Brands Hatch!

It has been fantastic to get back out on track, and exceptionally great weather for the whole day made it even better.

Having arrived the previous evening and spending the night in our exclusive choice of pit garage, all set up early, we had time to relax and ease into the day. I do like to get to the track as early as possible and give time to prepare mentally and be sure all the kit and machines are ready to go leaving plenty of time to get all the signing on and noise test etc done in good time.

Jeremy Hill arrived nice and early and was on hand to run through what ever I wanted to look at during the day. We decided to check my lines for the first session and in particular, the parts of the Indy circuit that we run on in Thunderbikes.It was my first time on the full GP circuit so it was good to have him run through that part of the circuit with me. I got a handle on it quite early and with just a few tweeks to how I was riding it, I found it no problem and really enjoyed riding it after spending years watching all my heros there.

I was not that confident that the bike was going to run right and had the spare set of carbs ready to swap back to the settings I had at Cadwell, just in case. Sure enough, after 8000 rpm and above , the bike wouldn't pull well at all. I therefore spent the first session, nursing the bike round and just concentrated on being smooth and taking the correct lines.
Once back in the garage, I set about the carbs but with not enough time to get out for the next session, I was forced to take Steve's FZR 400. This turned out to be great fun and I was very quickly finding the limit of the machine. It's a great handling bike and is fantastic at carrying high corner speed as it is small and light but lacks any serious power. Still immense fun!
I soon had the carbs fitted and the bike fired into life and reved well into the high rev range. This was encouraging for the next session.

Relief! finally... the bike reved well and was 98% better. Now I was able to concentrate on learning from Jeremy and working on my riding.

We continued to work on different aspects of my riding throughout the rest of the day and the feed back from Jeremy was positive. I was glad to hear his opinion of my style, which he described as smooth and a pleasure to watch and having good potential.
All the advise he had for me made perfect sense. It is good to have someone confirm that I am heading in the right direction with my riding both in a physical way and mentally too. we worked on some great energy saving things such as different use of holding gears for longer.Also some body position and movement tips, aimed at not upsetting the bike by making my riding smoother and with less effort with the result of going faster, for longer and with less energy sapping effort both on myself and the machine.
It was a very positive day and has helped me a great deal. I came away with plenty to think about and to work on.

I now look forward to the fastest circuit in the country, Snetterton at the end of the first week in July.
With more improvement needed to come from the carbs and no sign of a new set on the horizon, I may just head back to the dyno and see if things can be improved upon. If niether happens, then I will just have to suck it and see next time out!

Big thanks to Jeremy Hill for his time and effort.It is always a pleasure, a privilege and very much appreciated and welcome.
Also a big thanks to Jez's mate Richard for the baffles that helped bring down my noise test failing exhaust from 110db to 105db. It still failed until further tampering got it down to below the 101db limit... PHEW!