23rd May 2003 - Brands Hatch

As most of you may know Brands isn't exactly my favourite circuit but having done a California SuperBike School there recently I was hoping for some semi-decent results. After queuing for what seemed like most of the afternoon on Thursday I managed to get a garage despite the huge bundle on Thursday night and set about preparing the bike.

Decided to put some smaller jets in the carbs after getting my a**e kicked down the straights at Snetterton the last time when my bike was running very rich so called in at the Renegade workshop near the circuit on my way down. Spent the evening pulling the carbs and airbox apart to fit the jets and took the opportunity to catch up with a few people and talk about the weekend ahead. The last time I raced here I just scraped in to the 0:59s laps but had managed a 0:57.5s time at the CSS and I still felt there was more to come.

I missed the first session of the practice day whilst I was changing sprockets and got out for the second. It took a while to get in to it again but soon found that I could do 0:58s all day with the odd 0:57s for good measure. As the day wore on I managed to get plenty of low 0:57s laps and a solitary 0:56.50s lap after following one of the 250GP bikes in to Paddock Hill at his pace. Felt like the front and the rear were sliding around but kept it together.

Really pleased as the fastest I had ever been round Brands was on the Mille last year when I managed a 0:56.2s in practice and a 0:57.87s in the race. I had a couple of moments going in to Paddock Hill so I was a bit concerned about my suspension as it still seemed too hard so tried to soften it up a bit for the race.