Mondello Park BSB

I had to miss the Mondello round last season due to injuries but had ridden the SP-2 there in 03, quite a hard circuit to find that last half a second with many undulating and off-camber sections….. a little like Thruxton!

Another one of those never-ending rides to Holyhead to catch the ferry in my motorhome, the last 50 miles seems to drag on forever and when you finally get to the Port, half the paddock is there waiting for a boat. It’s a two week trip for me going straight to the NW200 afterwards and onto Croft for a BSB test on the way home!

Practice was hard work and nothing seemed to fall into place, the Kawasaki’s had received twelve percent more BHP all the way through the rev range but whenever I opened the throttle it either wheelied or tried to tie itself in a knot and more importantly I was nearly three seconds off the pace…… embarrassing!

After both free practice sessions I was a little lost in what direction to go in tomorrow’s qualifying….. I don’t mean the direction of the circuit just on set-up?

We made some improvements and went faster again in the first qualifying session but was still two seconds off pole which surprisingly Johnny Rea had upped his game to go fastest.

Managed to lap faster and go a second faster on my qualifying tyre but that was only good enough for seventeenth on the grid, not a happy bunny. What worried me more was the fact my race set-up wasn’t good enough and I hadn’t done enough laps on race tyres?

Had to treat the races as more of a test and score some points.

My race one start was good into the first turn but then Johnny Rea came sliding across the track in front of me then got t-boned.

Made up some good time and had caught the group in front fighting for tenth place with four laps to go when I lost the front and went grass-tracking. Managed to hold on and re-join finishing in a very disappointing fourteenth position!

Race two was better for me, we changed some settings again on the Kawasaki and made a decent start, I’ve always been a good starter but everybody now seems to get away very well. Mondello’s a very hard circuit to pass on but as the race went on I managed to pick my way through to eleventh position, a disgusting result but be had improved every time out on circuit, desperately need some testing time before Croft!

Next stop NW200 on Karl Harris’s Honda???