I am writing just after the race in the UK, the truth is not with much enthusiasm after analyzing what happened there. It is very easy to find solutions that would have got a better result afterwards, but you learn from the bad too. Since Tuesday we have already been preparing for Assen.
We went to the UK with hopes of getting a good result; encouraged by the fact that last year Dani won there. This together with the improvements made to the bike made us optimistic about having a good weekend. Rain appeared on the first day, but the truth is things went well for us, in the training session in the afternoon he set the best time. This was unthinkable at the start of the season because Dani still had not got the feeling for the wet, but he has now left this fear behind him.
Saturday dawned without rain and we were able to start testing the dry tyres to find the best ones for the race. Dani was third in free training and third in classification. It rained again on the Sunday. There was a chance that the race would be in the dry and so we prepared two different bikes, one for the wet and the other for the dry. Normally we use the same gear ratios for both the wet and dry, but here we made third gear shorter on the wet bike.
The set up on the suspension is also softer on the wet bike.In the end, just before the race it was hardly raining and we decided to prepare the second bike for the rain too, with the suspension set up softer; the only thing was that we did not have time to change the gear ratio. When he started the race we had a problem with the clutch and we had to change the bike.
During the first few laps Dani was up with the leaders, but then very light rain began to fall and he began to have problems with the rear wheel, it was too soft and he began to fall down the field. In the end he was 8th, with the tyre completely destoyed.This race is now history, and we cannot change the result, all we can do now is think about Assen.
