This round was one of the highlights for me. The Suzuka 8 hour is a race that must be seen to be believed.
The enthusiasm of the race fans is unbeatable plus Japan is such a cool place to go to. We had an absolute ball there, but still suffered the same miserable luck we’d had all year.
A stop and go penalty at the start, then a crash mid race, made this a very hard day at the office. We finished 18th.
The dinner then after party at the “Log Cabin” at Suzuka’s main hotel will go down as one of legend.
Afterwards we went to Nagoya for 3 days before flying back to the UK, and met an Aussie guy who owned “The Shooters Bar” of Nagoya. What a top bloke. This guy was a champion and we even got immortalised with a signed T-Shirt that would take pride of place on the wall of his bar amongst other sporting memorabilia.
He also taught me the trade secret of how to shot Tequila…..
What? It’s a secret.
Round #4 Oschersleben, Germany.
This was to be the big one of the series. Double points for this 24hour race meant that this could either make or break a championship campaign. It was unfortunately destined to break ours.
It was as if the gods were against us right from the start of the weekend.
On the morning of the first practice, Wylie, Notty and myself were involved in car crash on the way to the circuit. The van that WYLIE was driving spun on a slippery cobble stone road and rolled over.
We can laugh about it now but at the time I completely Sh*t myself. All of us escaped any major injury but I got pretty banged about and felt as though I’d been shot out of a canon!
If it was not for our Team Physio Eileen I would’ve had to sit out all practice/qualifying.
Thanks to her I qualified 3rd, and we managed to get a strong set up for the race.
Wokka actually led the race at one point before we settled into a top 3 battle during the night.
Kris woke me during the night to tell me that the bike had stopped and that our race was over. I can’t tell you exactly what I shouted then, but it sounded like “pluck it”.
So it was out of the leathers and off to the beer tent to have a few “Gilder’s” with the Deutscher folk.
The next day we drove to Hannover for a night on the town with some friends, before accomplishing what no-one thought possible, driving back to the UK in the van we crashed. It was a slow, smoky trip, but we got it there.
Moments before.....
This happened!
Round #5 Vallelunga, Italy.
Accompanied by my little bro Alex for this trip, we flew into Rome a day early to check out the sights.
Along with the rest of the gang we went and saw the Trevi Fountain and the Colloseum of Rome.
I’m not really one to marvel at landmark’s or stuff like that, but I’ve gotta say that the Colloseum was the most awesome construction I‘ve ever seen. It was Massive.
As for the race, both Wokka and myself were so hungry to end the year on a high that we just weren’t going to settle for a finish. We wanted a podium.
After qualifying 6th, we got our heads down and put together a strong race. No mistakes, fast times and a trouble free race gave us our first podium of the season and the first for Phase One Yamaha since 2003.
The weekend was one that I will never forget. A 2nd place finish and my first WEC podium.
No prizes for guessing what happened that night…. We went to party hardy, and this time the whole team got in on the action. It really was a great way to end the season.
We also moved from 6th to 4th in the World Championship standings which was a real bonus.
Somewhere in Rome...
Outside the Colloseum with Alex
Now I’m all set for a new season to start. Here’s hoping it will be even bigger and better than 2005.
