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Chaz Checks In... Qatar

After the Jerez GP I flew back to London on the Monday and got back to the Welsh borders on Monday evening. The week went fast before I had to be back in the plane and on the way to Qatar. During the week I did a lot of Mini MX riding at our track at home. It’s a really good track now. My dad’s added bits too it here and there over the winter and now we’ve got a it pretty good. There’s a couple of jumps, not too big though, big berms, little step overs, chicanes and all different types of corners. On Sundays we hold a sort of track day here, where anybody who has a minibike, are welcome to come and ride. As well as being good fun it’s also good for fitness. The track is pretty non-stop and you’ve got to stay sharp other wise it will get painful!

Apart from a couple of days cycling and minibike riding I went paint-balling on Saturday with a load a friends. We usually try to go a couple of times a year and it’s always really good fun. There was 16 of us and we we’re booked in at the same time as another group of 18 so they split us up and there was 17 aside. The setup is good because every game is different. You have 5 games all in all and the first one you have to defend an old, smashed to bits full sized helicopter and Landrover that they have there. One team starts at the other side of the forest and we started at the Helicopter. If you fail then the other team get points for putting these canisters, meant to be bombs, under the landrovers and getting their 'General’ (the person nominated to wear a lumo yellow bib, not a good job!) into the helicopter. If you are shot and it bursts then that’s it, you have to go out, game over. Anyway, we did pretty crap on the first couple of games and our tactics were all to pot.

From the third game onwards we were on top form! The 4th game was a beauty for me. The game is 15 minutes long and it’s set in and around a purpose built fort. First off we attacked the fort for 15 minutes which we didn’t do too bad at and then when that game was over it was time to defend it. Defending it is always a bit trickier because 1) You’re secluded to the 4 walls of the fort and can’t go out and 2) the attacking team, once shot, are allowed back in the game at 5 and 10 minute intervals. So if somebody gets shot on the 4th minute they can come back in the game a minute later and the defending team get no rest at all. I positioned myself in a tower where I could see the front entrance to the fort, and the back. It was a really good spot. As the game went on I was popping them off one by one and doing a real good job, I felt like rambo! I managed to shoot about 8 people meaning that they had to go back to their base and wait for the 5 and 10 minute interval so they could come back in. The problem was that after shooting the majority of the other team I was a marked man! Approximately 12 minutes of the game had passed and about 5 people had started making there way to the fort with one thing in mind- to shoot the shit out of me! I was happily crouched in my tower waiting for the next victim and then I thought I heard a bit of banging going on beneath me, under the tower. I left it a few seconds and then I stood up slightly, looked down and all I saw was this gun pointing straight at me through the gap in the wood. That was it, I jumped up and just started shooting and was getting severely pummelled myself. You’re not supposed to shoot people at less than 2 metres and this was as good as point-blank! To be fair though, I did fire the first shot. I saw the gun and that was it, I wasn’t going to look at it and wait to be shot! I saw the guy after and I had cut all his knuckle which was some consolation for the pasting that I got. He said he wasn’t going to shoot me because it was too close but seeing as I shot at him first they just let me have it! After about 20 shots were put into me from the 5 people I put my hands up to say that I surrender and they kept going! I must have taken about 30 shots! All good fun though! It was a good job I had my carbon racing gloves on as well, paintballs shot at cold hands are not a good mix! In the end we clawed back from a bad first couple of rounds and won, we had a real good day.

I flew to Qatar by myself on Monday the 3rd. I left home at 6am for my flight at Heathrow at 11:30am. Usually Heathrow is about 2 ½/3 hrs from home. It was all going good until I got to the M40. There was a big accident there which caused a couple of hours of delays and I was sure to miss my flight. I got to the airport at about 11am and went straight to the Qatar Airways help desk to see what I could do. Luckily there was another flight at 3:00pm that afternoon so I got booked on to that one and then moved my car from the not so cheap short-stay car park.

We took off at 3 and then 6 hours later I arrived in Qatar to something that I didn’t expect to see, rain. It looked like it had lashed it down when I got the taxi from the airport to the hotel. There were big floods across the roads, rain was something that the Qatari’s didn’t look like they were very well prepared for at all! Also I had Fernando Al Bin Alonso as a taxi driver, he was flat out aquaplaning through all the floods, loving every minute of it!

On Tuesday I woke up and looked out of the window and it was bright sunshine. Also out of the hotel there was a really nice view onto the beach and hotel swimming pool. I hadn’t had time to look at the hotel but that morning I did a bit of exploring and it’s one of the nicest I’ve ever stayed in, I was a bit spoilt to be honest! You know it’s good when a few of the MotoGP riders are staying there. I had breakfast with Colin Edwards and his assistant Pete which is always funny. I could listen to Colin and his stories all day! That afternoon I went into Doha town with Colin and Pete to the shopping centre there. We just mooched around there for a few hours, bought nothing and then went back to the hotel. When I got back I played beach volleyball with my mechanics which we lost. And then we thought we’d try football, which we also lost! Before we knew it the day was over. I had dinner with Pete and Colin again and showed Colin a book my best mate bought me called 'The Essential Book Of Foreign Insults’……………..which was possibly a bad move! The book has every English swearword/insulting phrase you can think of and then translated on the opposite page into Italian, French, Spanish and German. Extremely handy for the paddock! Also in the back there are a few phrases for some of the more not so widely spoken languages. Like Greek, Portuguese, Russian etc, but the worst/best at that moment in time being Arabic! That’s when it went downhill. Over dinner Colin was reeling off a few Arabic insults, not too loud but if somebody wanted to listen they could have probably heard things like 'kiss my ass’ etc!

On Wednesday I went to the circuit quite early in the morning. I walked a lap of the track and then talked to the mechanics about what we can do to help me get more comfortable on the bike. The team had bought some 15mm extended handlebars where as before I had 10mm. And we also had a couple of other ideas to try, bar positioning, taking off the double layer seat foam that I used in Jerez. The problem is that when you start to make the bike like a Harley and comfortable to ride, making things longer etc. makes it more aerodynamic so that I can get in and feel part of the bike, but, you start to lose feeling with it. Longer rear footrests, extra seat padding, extended and wider bars all makes it more difficult to get a feeling with the bike and feel exactly what the bike is doing.

On Thursday I started the first free practice session by running in the bike and new brake pads for 3 laps. After running in I did a few laps to get a feel for the bike and it felt even smaller than Jerez with the longer bars on! This was because the angle of the bars had been brought back and it made a huge difference. I again stopped and we widened the angle a bit. It felt much more comfortable for me but not as good to turn the bike. On about my 3rd lap out of pits I lost the front in the left handed 2nd corner. I don’t really know what happened. About ¾ of the way through the corner, just as I was starting to get on the gas the front folded on me and went past the point of no return. I’d have been able to get back on, had the bar not been snapped. That was the only real damage and I was fine but a bit annoyed because it was a pretty pathetic crash and so early on in a weekend. I got back to the box and then my bike followed about 5 minutes later. My mechanics quickly replaced the broken bits on the bike and I managed to get back out with about 10 minutes left. I stayed out until the end of the session and I was struggling to get any feeling back from the bike. I ended the session in 21st.

To cut a long story short the remaining practices and qualifying were extremely difficult. On Friday we continued to fiddle with the bike positioning and weren’t really getting very far. The problem is that all of this should have been sorted out long ago in testing, whereas at the GP’s there is limited track time and everything is done in much more of a rush. We changed the bike around, no major chassis/geometry changes like you would think but just basic control adjustments like different bar positioning, foot-pegs, shorter and longer bar extensions etc. to help me get more comfortable and start to feel like I'm part of the bike. I know that never in a million years is a grand prix bike going to be comfortable, and if you do start finding them comfortable…….then your not riding fast enough but there was things that could be done, and what had to be done, to help.

On Saturday I started getting a bit more feeling with the bike. For the last blast in qualifying I had a new front and rear tyre ready for 1 flying lap. It was my fastest lap but I admit that I didn’t make the most of what I had. The first 2 sectors were pretty good but I messed up my complete lap in the 3rd sector. I went a bit wide on the left hairpin before the series of fast right handers and at Qatar when you drift slightly off line it gets damn slick and costs a lot of time. I did a 2.06.3 about 1.5 seconds off where I wanted to be. I felt like I could have got maybe 0.6 of that myself and then the rest would come from refinement of the bike.

For Sunday we came up with a couple of ideas overnight. We had enquired to Aprilia/Gilera about some longer footrests that they had specially made for Marco Simoncelli because he is reasonably tall (I'm 3cm taller). First off they said that I might be able to have a set but then I think they changed their minds or maybe didn’t have enough sets just in case Marco crashed. This would have been good to try but just before warm up we decided to put on the standard handle bar mounts to try and get a bit more of a positive feedback from the front. After running in new pistons I stayed out to get used to the shortness of the bike. It would sacrifice getting tucked in because my elbows were sticking out but I think this is a minor problem with the size of the Aprilia fairing. It was difficult to get a real idea of how good the change was because it was so windy. Not only was it windy but it was never the same for two laps in a row which made it interesting! My gearbox had not been altered and there was a headwind up the start/finish straight. I felt like I was doing about 30mph flat in top when Smrz came by! He was doing about 15kph faster!

I decided to keep the shortened bars for the race, there wasn’t a great deal of difference so it wasn’t going to hurt. I went into the race with a view of, try my best and see what happens.

My start was so-so, I got away about even with the rest of the pack. For the first few laps I was struggling to hang on to a group of about 5 riders in front of me. I really wanted to be fighting with somebody and make a good race of it but I was losing about ½ second a lap. On the second lap one of the Italian riders passed me like I was stood still at the end of the start finish straight. He must have come by at about 10kph faster and I was in the slipstream of the guy in front. I thought that was a bit too much but kept my head down for the next 18 laps. Again, like Jerez, it was a very lonely race. I broke away from those behind me but got broken but those in front as well. My gearbox had been altered to cope with the wind but the engine wasn’t pulling well. It felt flat on top and was only probably a little bit out on the carburetion settings which is all it takes on Aprilia’s and was costing a lot with all the wind. I crossed the line disappointed in 17th. It’s not where I want, or expect to be or for that matter - know where I can be. After the race I realised that the engine was costing me more than I probably thought it was. After scanning over the timing sheets I saw that I was consistently between 10-14kph down on top speed compared to those in front and behind me. At first I thought this was probably because I never had a consistent slipstream but then I looked at my team mate’s speeds and neither did he have a slipstream.

I’m keeping my chin up because at the moment it can only get better. There is a lot of things that need to be worked on and unfortunately we’ve got no testing planned but that doesn't mean it can't get better. I’m at home now for a couple of weeks before the Turkish GP in which I'll be riding my bicycle, minibike, supermoto and anything else I can find that consists of 2 wheels and a set of handlebars! I had my joint best result at Turkey last year and it’s an awesome track so I hope that we can start to pick it up from there. The team have gone back to Italy now and they are going to make me some different foot rest hangars and try to modify the seat/sub-frame of the Aprilia and take it back another 20-30mm just to give me a bit more room. It’s not going to be easy to do because it is fully carbon but they are a pretty clever bunch so I’m sure they’ll sort something out!

Finally I have to say thanks to the team and especially my mechanics, Luca Montenari aka Mountain boy (Montenari apparently translates to mountain boy in English). His brother Nicola aka Turbo because he is absolutely flat out 24/7 and Alessandro aka Ninja because he’s a bit of a Kawasaki fan! They are working hard at the moment changing the bike around session after session and have not yet seen any results which I hope to bring them soon. Also thanks to everyone else for there continued support and those who appreciate what we’re up against.

Chaz#57!