"I’ve been riding the bike too smoothly”
To prepare Jack for the Cadwell Park round of the 848 championship, he and his dad entered the Hottrax club race at the Lincolnshire circuit the week before. “We wanted to have some time on the track without the pressure that comes with being in the BSB paddock” explained Jack. The bike had been set up for the previous round at Brands Hatch and felt ok, with a best lap-time of 1.41.0. “Terry Rymer (a very experienced ex-GP, World superbike, World Endurance and British Superbike racer and supplier of Jack’s LS2 helmets) had a feel of the bike and said not to touch the suspension settings, so we just added 5mm of rear ride height to help the bike turn in more quickly and left it as it was. The race went well and I felt confident for the next round.”
But qualifying didn’t go to plan. “I qualified 18th out of 19, a disaster. I was half a second quicker than the previous weekend but my head wasn’t in it. So that evening my friend Alex Barkshire, a fellow racer, made me go through a map of the track and look at where I was braking, turning in and changing gear. Along with evidence from the Flextion datalogger we found areas where I was weak and I then played them through in my head to recalibrate. Also I ‘ve always been told that Ducati’s need to be ridden smoothly, but so did my old 125 race bike. But I’ve been riding too smoothly; I need to get more aggressive and use my upper body to force the bike into corners. ” Another problem Alex noticed was Jack’s pre-race preparation. With friends and sponsors around me I wasn’t getting into the right frame of mind, so before the race I shut myself away in the van and listened to Red hot Chilli Peppers and Kasabian while closing my eyes and going through the lap again and again; that really helped me to focus.
The preparation paid off. Race one Jack finished 9th and race two he managed 13th. What was more interesting was the lap-times came down to 1.37; 3.5 seconds less than before. Onto the last round, Silverstone.
Silverstone arena circuit is a massive 3.6 miles long and the same set up that the Formula one race uses. To help learn the 18 corners Jack managed to fit in a track day a few weeks earlier and found very little need for set-up changes, barring gearing. “During qualifying I was lying 9th, but came into put a little more preload on the rear shock to help stop the back moving around exiting some of the faster corners. But by the time I left the pit lane I knew it was wrong, the back end would compress but didn’t feel like it was coming back up again. This made it want to understeer out of the corners. I ended up 13th and went back to the original settings.”
Race one Jack was in a battle for 8th to 12th place, chopping and changing. But slowly the others started edging away as Jack made little errors, which led to frustration. Frustration in turn led to bigger errors.” Nuffield, the long right hander is so crucial to get a good exit as it takes you onto the start finish straight. But the bike kept running wide on the exit, possibly because I was coming onto the power too soon to try and make up time.”
To fix the problem of running wide Paul, Jack’s dad dropped the forks through the yokes by 3mm to steepen the steering angle. The race was going well until Jack started to feel arm-pump half way through the race. “The only way I can describe it is your hands feel numb. You can’t feel the brake so you end up braking early and you can’t feel the throttle so I was more careful. Slowly the pack in front got further and further away; I really didn’t want to finish the last race in 13th. My lap times are good enough to be another six or seven places higher.”
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