Hi everyone,

The weather hasn’t been kind at all to us, rain and fog. And when there is no rain every day there has been fog on the mountain.

The newcomers practice was cancelled, Monday’s entire practice was cancelled and we finally managed to get a practice session on Tuesday.

 However, the late afternoon sun glare was horrendous. On some corners Mick had to brake very hard to miss hitting the walls and  I couldn’t see my landmarks to move, which didn’t help Mick at all either.  

 After the final 3rd lap, it was a relief from both of us as it had been extremely hard work out there. The first lap my head was all muddled up due to the sun glare and bumps. The bike was darting in all directions but Mick did a fantastic job just keeping it on the road.  

The suspension was all wrong. It was too soft in the front, which was like sitting on a pogo stick, and Mick had very little control. It is so different setting up a sidecar for a road circuit when you are used to racing on smooth closed circuits, like we have in Australia.

Mick and I discussed that no matter how hard or unridable the bike will be we had to do 3 laps, to qualify  (that would take all the pressure off us for the rest of the week).

 The Wednesday practice was cancelled, as was Thursday.

 Last year we finished 13th in Race 1 and 20th in race 2 with a fastest lap of 108.088mph. We are back to better this and although there is a lot of work ahead of us we relish the challenge.

 We’ll be in touch later, 

Team Alton Racing.

Aussie Team Alton finished 12th with a race lap average of 106.933mph.