Chaz Davies Racing : Chaz Checks In... Mugello and Catalunya

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Chaz Checks In... Mugello and Catalunya

Hello everybody,

It’s been a while since I last “checked in” but as you can probably imagine things have been a bit hectic - or not as the case may be! The last time I wrote I was living the high life and rolling with the minted boys in Monaco. I had an awesome week there, Casey and I trained by cycling everyday, racked up over 400k’s and went to the F1.

The F1 was cool. It’s another world ey?! Money, money and more money. The hospitality's there definitely set the bar for MotoGP (especially the huge Red Bull one) and you can see that what goes on with hospitality's etc in that paddock, gets transferred over to ours as they get more fancy as the years go by. As for the F1 itself, well……..we didn’t actually see any racing or practising. We could hear it but saw nothing. As it was Monaco it is very difficult too see any action because the paddock is a bit different to normal and very enclosed. It’s split into two areas, one for hospitality's, race truck offices etc and the other paddock where the pit garages are. The best bit about the F1 was that we got a tour of the Lucky Strike Honda teams pit and got a real insight into all the F1 technology and basically everything else that goes with it. Casey and I got to try out Rubens Barrichello’s car for size which was waaay too small for me but fitted Case well. Everything is carbon fibre and I mean everything. Just the steering wheel alone is worth £40,000!! (unfortunately I couldn't fit it into any of my pockets, I can get 3 races out of £40,000!!!). We learnt a lot from our tour and it was a big eye opener. I knew that F1 had a lot of technology and money behind it but I didn’t expect it to be quite that much. I thought our paddock was pretty advanced but F1 is quite a long way ahead. But, saying all that, it doesn’t make the racing any better and I’d rather watch a bike race any day! Anyway, thanks a lot to the Lucky Strike team for there hospitality.

After the F1 we did some more cycling and went out with a couple of pro’s on Wednesday morning before we had to leave for Mugello in the afternoon. We met up with Bayliss who was a bit sore from his off’s at Silverstone but was up for taking me and Casey out once again. We also met with Axel Merckx and Stuart O’Grady who both will be racing at the Tour De France next month. Them boys put a bit of hurt on us because we went into the hills but it was good fun and good to see just how strong the pro’s are. We did a 3 hour ride and then had to go back to Casey and get packing for out flight from Nice to Italy.

When we got to Italy on Wednesday evening I was still not sure if I would be racing that weekend. The team had put a proposal to IRTA for Franco Battaini to ride in place of me and I didn’t find out until 2 o’clock on Thursday afternoon that I wouldn‘t be riding. I was obviously p***ed off about the whole situation but I can’t say that I didn’t expect it. It’s been on the cards since the first race of the year and I am now without a ride. To cover the whole saga in two words it would be “stitch-up”. When we met with the sponsor last November the team had promised us 100% that they were sure everything was absolutely good to go and were convinced that all was in place and we were ready to go racing. As the team has been around for many years, we really had to trust what they were telling us although we had heard, this particular sponsor, have a reputation for not being entirely trustworthy. I was supposed to be on a semi-factory LE Aprilia, earn a wage for the first time, get this and get that and we’ve have ended up with FA. The team received 400,000 euros out of the supposed 2million euros that was supposed to come. I feel that this amount of money would have been easily enough to run myself & the 125cc rider Andrea Iannone (which were the sponsors contracted riders) on standard kit bikes (not the LE semi-official bikes), at least, for the season, but obviously the money has been spent elsewhere & now the team are looking for more money off their riders which unfortunately we don't have. I am obviously feeling that we were "led up the garden path" but things happen & all I can do is learn from it & make sure it doesn't happen again.

Mugello was a boring weekend! The racing was awesome to watch but it would have been nice to be out there. We had made big progress with what we had in Le Mans and just got unlucky there on Saturday and Sunday but I was confident that that would have been the first race of the year that I could have been satisfied with the result. The one thing I didn’t miss about not racing was the pre-race nerves! Over the weekend we had a meeting with Dorna and they said they definitely wanted to keep me in the paddock and had some ideas, and to be patient. We listened to them and have been staying patient for a while and are waiting to see if anything happens.

After Mugello I went home and was there every day before we left for Barcelona the following Wednesday. I knew that I wouldn’t be riding in Barcelona but it’s pretty important for me to keep my face in the paddock. Again the weekend was pretty boring. I did a bit of commentary on the Dorna world feed which goes out on the internet, to Australia and to some places in Asia. I also played a lot of table football or "foosball" in Casey’s hospitality. I’m glad to say that both Casey and I are coming on leaps and bounds! We always end up playing Casey’s hospitality staff or his mechanics who are all Italian and are practically born onto the things! At first they used to hammer us but race by race we are getting closer, all we both need now is a bit more co-ordination with our left hands along with a bit more power and well be a force to be reckoned with! It’s good fun and passes the time well.

I will continue to sit tight for a little longer but now it really is getting to the point that I need to start looking elsewhere and at this stage of my career I feel my best chance in 250 GP's has been taken away, so to salvage something out of this year perhaps gaining some 4 stroke experience would be constructive. I realise I can keep waiting as there is always a chance that a 250cc rider could get injured, which has already been the case with Heidolf, but all the lesser funded teams require a budget to race, which is something I am not in a position to do. Obviously MotoGP would be my ultimate goal. I feel I have enough Grand Prix experience to be considered, but the opportunities in this class are very limited. I would really like a test on one of these machines to show what I could do as I recently tested a 1000cc four-stroke in Misano & felt comfortable with the physical size of the machine. Obviously the Porto ride was up for grabs and my name was put forward there. I didn’t fit the bill too well for that and apart from that I’d probably fit the bike a lot worse! I’d have definitely given it a shot but I think it would have been very difficult because of my size. The Honda, although competitive, over the past few years has become very compact to suit riders such as Dani Pedrosa. Anyway, I heard today that my ex-team mate Martin Cardenas has got the ride. He fit’s the bill well for Repsol being South American and besides that has been having a good year so fair play to him.

For now I’m gonna be at home until Donington. I’m not going to Assen this weekend and it will be pretty crap watching a GP from the settee, I haven’t done that for over four years. I’ll carry on training and doing my usual stuff at home. I’m not ready for going down the job centre just yet! Hopefully we will get something resolved ASAP and I’ll be back on a bike in the not too distant.

Chaz Checks In... Mugello and Catalunya

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