6th July 2001 - Snetterton

After feeling unwell and missing some of the races at Mallory I made two changes in preparation for Snetterton. Firstly I withdrew from the Clubman championship for this weekend and the upcoming Cadwell weekend and, secondly, I bought a microwave for the van so I could at least eat properly. I'm sure the change from assorted sandwiches and cold food to baked potatoes and bacon sandwiches would help enormously. For good measure I also changed the brake fluid as my confidence on the brakes has been something less than inspiring over the past few meetings.

Due to other commitments I couldn't make the full practice day so set off first thing on Friday morning planning to get to the circuit at lunchtime. There was much less traffic than I had expected so I made it in time to get out in the last session before lunch (stupidly I had booked the full day before realising that I wouldn't be able to make all of it). After the frantic nature of Oulton Park last weekend this felt positively relaxed and I couldn't believe it when I was immediately in to the 1:24s time bracket and even managed to drop down towards my best of 1:22s towards the end.

Not quite sure where this performance was coming from but it continued in the next session. I managed to go straight down in to the 1:22s level and was soon putting in a number of 1:21s times. Somewhere in amongst all that I came up with a 1:20.66 lap when I was trying to chase someone, almost 1.4s quicker than the last time I raced here and, for some reason, over 0.5s faster than any other time I managed in that session.

Decided to bleed my brakes again as they still weren't quite right. Had to do it twice as I messed it up the first time so ended up missing the next session whilst everything got sorted. Did manage to get ready to go out but no sooner had I got in to the pit lane than the session was red flagged and that was it.

Out for the last session of the day and I felt much more confident that I could stop at the end of the straights ;-) Managed a whole load of low 1:20s laps with one just dipping under the magic level with a 1:19.97 - It may only be three hundredths of a second below the 1:20s but that was quite a boost.

Although only being out for three sessions I dropped over 2s from my lap times. Went back to the hotel feeling very happy with my riding and very well fed from my new microwave - Possibly the best fifty quid I've spent since I started racing ;-)