My ankle had stood up well during testing earlier this week at Le Mans so wouldn’t be a problem at Donington, It’s actually better on the bike than walking.

I was a little concerned as the Dienza team had been away to Spain on a stag weekend in between races meaning limited time had been spent on the race bike.

The ZX10 has been on the dyno for one day but still has no dash that records any suspension data making set-up much slower to iron out problems.

I arrived quite late on Thursday at Donington after travelling back from the LeMans test but really looking forward to getting my teeth stuck into the BSB bike.

First session on Friday was cut short with a misfire that meant changing the throttle, re-routing cables etc and again only managing one lap.

Had another problem with fuelling second session but managed fifteen laps trying to get the fuel mapping smoothed out. The ZX10 is still very aggressive when the throttle is opened to the point of being dangerous.

Changes were made overnight making the machine a little better but still suffering the same problem. Managed another seventeen laps but suffering with massive chatter problems at the Old Hairpin and Hollywood.

Raised some ride height for the qualifying session curing some of the chatter problems but still suffering with the fuelling issues meaning a qualifying tyre was no real gain.

I wanted to get into the 1m 34’s on race tyres but managed 1m 35 flat, not a good time but considering I’ve only completed fifty laps on this machine so far this season and still have a fuelling problem, surprised I’d gone that fast.

The team worked on the bike trying to improve the problems for the race, Dunlop advised me which race tyres to use as I’ve only completed a few laps.

I entered the circuit for morning warm-up again the bike started to miss-fire; some riders very nearly hit me down Craner Curves as I cruised back to the paddock missing the remainder of that session.
The team tried to repair the machine ready for race one and my spare bike is still only fifty percent ready.

When the bike was started for race-1 I could hear the engine was not right, when I entered the circuit for my sighting lap the miss-fire was still there. I pulled back into pit-lane scared that if I started the race it was not safe for me or anybody behind me on the grid.

Race-2 was very much the same, in fact even worse with the conditions being very very wet, an aggressive power delivery was going to make my day a painful one.

I parked the machine in the pit and headed for the commentary box.

Disappointed is a very diplomatic way of expressing my feelings so far this season!