5th April 2002 - Silverstone

Although the Rookie 600 series visited Silverstone last year I didn't make it due to the accident at Brands Hatch. Tony Norman was kind enough to dig up a picture from Brands Hatch last year which I've added here. The bike flying through the air is Mandy's and, although you can't see it in the picture, it gained a rather large dent in the tank as it decided to use me as a spring board. Needless to say I came off worst and this visit to Silverstone was going to be my second race meeting since that accident.

Despite having some of the best facilities in the country Silverstone also seems to have some of the most peculiar rules. There was a practice day arranged for the Friday but we weren't allowed access to the circuit until that morning. Those of us who had a fair distance to travel turned up on Friday night and had to park outside the circuit. No power meant no heat and to top it off there were no toilet facilities either. As it was still April I had a restless night freezing my bits off despite my supposedly warm sleeping bag.

Despite the fact that the circuit said they wouldn't let anyone in until 07:30 am I was woken up by the revving of engines at 06:45 am as people started jostling for position. I need not have worried as Silverstone garages are huge. They come in blocks of three and each block usually holds just one Formula 1 team. We managed twelve bikes in ours and still had plenty of room for more. They even had toilets within the garage - Almost unheard of given some circuits can only manage about two toilets for the whole paddock.

The first session proved a little scary. The circuit is ridiculously wide with enough run off on most corners for bike to be able to stop, turn round before they hit anything. Unfortunately on other section of the Club circuit the walls appear to be very close. Didn't bother with the lap timer initially as I just wanted to work out where everything went. A couple of scary moments ensued when I didn't realised quite how twisty some of the twisty bits actually were.

Having survived the first session I put the lap timer on and went out to see if I could string some laps together without crashing. With my reputation! ;-) Progressed fairly gently and felt pretty good on some of the more awkward turns. No major moments although I was concentrating more on reference points rather than decent lap times. I think I managed a best in the low 1:13s with plenty of laps in the lower 1:14s.

The third session was the an opportunity to get on the pace. I knew Steve Bullimore was doing 1:03s at this point and although (a) he has been to Silverstone before, and (b) he's very quick anyway, I felt there was room for improvement. Realised around this time that my battered fairing wasn't giving me much protection and so I was getting very tired down the straights. I guess having a screen that is sitting a good four inches lower than it should do thanks to the recent visit to Brands Hatch didn't help matters. Got down to the 1:12s but felt like I was working much harder than I had before.

The next session was much of the same. The harder I tried the smaller the improvement and the more tired I got. I guess the fact that I hadn't had the opportunity to do any training since the accident last August didn't help but I was obviously missing something fundamental. I stopped for lunch before the session even ended and found that I had been doing consistent mid 1:11s with a few low 1:11s thrown in for good measure. Not a great start but a start none the less. I was having major problems about where to start braking and when to turn at both Brooklands and Maggotts Curve (see map for details).

For the first session after lunch I decided to go back to basics and try to remember the reference points I was using earlier in the day to try and get some consistency back in to my riding. Needless to say I was travelling much slower, or so it felt, and not getting on the gas so much in the corners yet I was quite comfortably in the 1:13s again. Towards the end of the session a couple of quicker guys came by and I found they really weren't getting away from me on the faster, more open corners but were making up a huge amount of ground at of the slower, tighter turns.

The next session was to be the last of the day, not due to any problems with the bike but because I was completely knackered and was getting very ragged. Loads of 1:13s and 1:12s, plus the odd 1:11s lap, but no real improvement since the start of the day. Pulled in early and decided to enjoy the sunshine and relax. Hopefully an early night would help things, particularly when loads of other people were going much faster than I had managed.