Dan’s Blog – Aragon, FIM CEV Repsol Junior World Championship weekend

Thursday

– On Thursday we had 4 X 30 minute session, so I knew I had time to get back in to the swing of things. The first two session were cautious to say the least, I was quite a way off the pace. But in the afternoon I managed to find a setting that gave me a little confidence back, I improved by 1.5 second in every session. Ending day one on a 2:01:6, this was the fastest I had ever been around Aragon so I was very happy.

Friday

– Friday consisted of 2 X 40 minute session, so it was a relaxing day. In the first session we kept on trying different settings, we weren’t chasing lap times so much as the first day was good. Unfortunately a change in the wrong direction saw me crash at turn 13. We learnt from our mistake and put it right for the second session.
The second session was very windy, it was hard to even put a fast lap time in. I felt good in the session and managed to do the same lap time as I did on Thursday. The changes we were making were more and more positive and it was bringing me a lot of confidence. I was confident for qualifying.

Qualifying

– Going in to qualifying I was confident we could do a good job, Mark and the team had worked really hard and I felt I could give them something back. Q1 was very cold, the track temperature was very low. It meant the track wasn’t at it’s fastest. I managed to improve on my Friday time by 0.7 seconds but I wasn’t enough. I finished Q1 in P30 and on a 2:00:8.
Q2 saw the track temperature rise, the conditions were a lot better. I knew this was my chance to improve, I managed to improve at first by 0.1 of a second. This wasn’t enough, so we tried again. I knocked another 0.6 off, which put me in P21 and only 1.9 seconds off the leader. I was really happy with this as I had been improving all weekend and once again I improved.

Race

– Going in to the race I felt very nervous, I was very cautious off the start. Not getting the best initial start meant I dropped back a little, but something never felt quite right. I felt unnerved, I tried my best and fought as hard as I could. The fatigue hit me towards the end, my arm was struggling. I crossed the line in P25, I wasn’t happy with the result but I was very happy that I had finished a race. I’ll work very hard now to improve for Valencia, the final round of the 2017 Junior World Championships season.

Overall it was a good weekend, improving all the time. I feel more confident going in to Valencia, a track I know and have been in the points at before. Without the hard work of my team this weekend it wouldn’t have been possible. I’d like to thank them all for such an amazing job they did.