Portimao and Almeria Pt 2

[davefwr]

About 10km from the track I filled up with petrol. At 21 euros I was glad it was going to be the last fill up in Portugal, although I was sad to be eating my last pastel de nata. Heading east towards Spain on the motorway the sky was black and it looked like it was going to piss down but as I crossed the Spanish border the sun came out and my leathers and helmet dried out properly for the first time in two days. The journey to Jerez from the Algarve is all motorway and not very interesting with no real way do vary it due to the Doñana National Park in between which is the largest area in Europe with no roads. I came off the motorway onto the NIV and did the last 80km to Jerez on that. I put my bike in the underground parking of the NH hotel I’d booked right in the centre of town, just 56 euros, went up to the room which was very nice, and had a shower and a sleep.

At about 8pm I walked outside and although it was a little chilly it was a lovely night. I got a taxi up to the circuit, and drove right up to the garage of my friends at ESCUDERIA NUEGRIP They were busy working on the race bike and were happy to have qualified on the second row in seventh with a great time of 1.43.0. For a Spanish championship bike which is basically Superstock spec with a kit engine, that’s vey fast and pole was even faster at 1.42.1, only about 3 seconds off MotoGP. I went to their hospitality tent and had a beer and soon everyone turned up. The beer was flowing and the starter of fried chicken blood with onions would definitely have been nicer if it hadn’t been stone cold, but the company was good. Casimiro had come down from Neugrip Madrid to try and race but had had bike problems and hadn’t qualified so he was partying even though all the others had work the next morning. We had some barbecued pork steaks and then a really excellent pork fillet in Oloroso sauce that one of the sponsors who owns a restaurant in El Cuervo had brought along with some really good Ribera del Duero Reserva. We went on till about 2 then the restaurant owner headed off and said he’d give me a lift to the hotel. He was really pissed and driving about 10mph on the wrong side of the road. I said ‘I’m English I’m allowed to drive on the left but you’re Spanish so you should drive on the right’ which got everyone in the car roaring with laughter at him, and him to move to the correct side.

We weaved our way into town and I got to my hotel past the disco opposite which was in full swing, with hundreds of people milling about outside. I put earplugs in to sleep that night. At 9 am, all too few hours later, I woke up and rode up to the track. I didn’t put a jacket and gloves on as I didn’t want to carry them around and although it was cold, I knew it would be hot later. Even after 6 years living here it still feels fantastic to be riding in a T shirt at 9am on a November morning! I arrived at the track, saw Jesus the boss of Neugrip, and chatted to a few people, the race was at 10.30 so I left them to prepare and went to the cafeteria for breakfast and then to the grandstand behind the pits to watch the race. Neugrip’s rider, David Tirado got a bad start but made his way up to 8th went back to 9th and then a couple of the leaders took each other out right in front of me on the last lap, ended up 7th. A good result for his first year in the championship.

I went to the pits and congratulated the guys, watched the 600s and then headed back to the hotel, to pack and go to Almeria. I headed out of Jerez onto the A382 to Antequera, a really fast bendy A road and then got on the motorway to Granada, Guadix and Almeria. Last year at this time when I went to Almeria it was snowing at the Puerto de la Mora 1400 metres up but today it was sunny and warm. The Sierra Nevada is always beautiful but it seemed more so with the unseasonably warm weather. I stopped for lunch at Riofrio near Granada and had a nice plate of steak egg and chips sitting outside in the sun. 2 hours later I was passing Almeria on my way to the hotel in Aguadulce. I found the hotel easily enough, showered and changed and went to explore as I’ve never been to Aguadulce before. It’s a beach resort about 10km east of Almeria and there’s not much there, although it was quite busy on a Sunday afternoon with people who’d come from Almeria for the day. I spotted a couple of restaurants which looked OK for later on and headed back to the hotel where I met up with Steve and Sarah Jordan from Steve Jordan Motorcycles - Surrey and the south east of England We had a few beers and John and Ange turned up hungry so we decided to try the Pizzeria I’d seen earlier. It was very nice we had some good pizza and a couple of bottles of red went back to the hotel where most of the rest of the participants for the Racedays International Trackdays trackday had turned up, had a couple more beers and went to bed. Gerry said he’d organised breakfast for 6.30 for us to be at the track by 8 but I had no intention of doing either of those things.

About 9 I headed off to the track for the 10am start. I got there and said hello to Jesus and Marcos from Neugrip who were there providing the tyre service and went to the pits for a briefing. Jeremy McWilliams was there running his Superbike Academy Jeremy McWilliams Superbike Academy | Motorcycle Track Days | Motorcycle Race School | Racedays with Simon Crafar and Eugene Laverty and Gino Rea European Superstock 600 Champion as instructors. An impressive lineup. The first day was a normal sessioned trackday, Race, Advanced and Inters but we all had transponders and all lap times were recorded. The second day was qualifying for the optional races and a 2 hour endurance race for 2 rider teams and the third was mixed open pit lane and fun races for any one who wanted to take part. At regular intervals there were lectures from Jeremy and Simon about how to ride better, which were very interesting. When someone who’s achieved what these guys have tells you something, you listen. They were both good speakers and had some interesting points

Unsurprisingly I knew a lot of the participants, and spent a lot of time wandering about the pits chatting to people. In the first session I did a 1.52 which was one of the faster times but I knew they’d get faster and I wouldn’t. I tried doing a few of the things that the lecturers were telling us but it didn’t seem to make any difference. I think I’m too old a dog to learn new tricks.

It was good to be out on track with riders of this calibre, there was hardly anybody there who wasn’t a competent rider. The MV Agusta factory were also there, their test riders testing the 2010 models which was quite interesting and Bradley Smith was there with the team he runs in the British 125cc championship, helping his even younger riders out. There was Aprilia UK there developing a new SXV450 roadrace bike for a series in the UK next year, although they were horribly slow and the cherry on the cake, two Moto 2 bikes testing with Scott Redding and a couple of foreign riders whose names I’ve forgotten.

It was a good day although there weren’t that many people on track but the weather was perfect, sunny and about 25 degrees with a light breeze to cool you down. I did about 120 miles on track and drank about 5 litres of water, the very dry air in the desert at Almeria really sucks the moisture out of you. The last session for my group finished at 4.30 so I took the bike over to the Neugrip van to get new tyres fitted. They were very busy so I sat around and drank their beer while waiting for them to finish. It was dark by about 6 and 6.30 by the time I set off to the hotel. I showered and changed and went to the hotel bar to get a few beers. This time we ended up as a big group going to get dinner about 14 of us went to the Argentinian steak house, owned by the same people as the one in Almeria which is very good. We had a really good bottle of Argentinian Malbec followed by several more and some meat so rare it was still mooing faintly while listening to lots of racing stories. It was a good evening although the food wasn’t as good as the restaurant in Almeria. Back in the hotel, I had a couple of gin and tonics which don’t seem to do as much damage as the brandy and went to bed.

More below

[davefwr]

Next morning was beautiful and sunny again, and I rode the 60km to the circuit feeling great. I arrived just in time to do the first session which was great on new tyres and then went to look at the timetable. We had a couple more lectures from Jeremy and Simon regarding body position and throttle use (basically give it lots!) and then went out for what was called a qualifying session although it wasn’t any different from any of the others. Every time they put up a timesheet I was slipping further down the order but there wasn’t much I could do about it because when I try harder I tend to fall off and I’ve really had enough of doing that.

Gerry the organiser came up to me and asked me if I was going to do the endurance race as he had a couple of people looking for partners, but I said I wasn’t sure. I was talking to Sarah who wasn’t racing as her bike had dropped a valve when this bloke came up and said, ‘I hear you haven’t got a partner for the race, would you race with my son?’
I said OK who’s your son? He replied Gino Rea. I said I thought I’d be a bit too slow, but he said that Gino had borrowed a really shit bike for the race and it would be OK. The bike was a dead stock 04 GSXR750 with shagged tyres, but I thought he’d still be faster than me. It’s not every day you get to be team mate to a current world champion so I said yes, I’d do it. A mate of Jeremy’s called Dicky stepped in as team manager and organised riding stints and pitstops and we were away.We decided to do 40 minutes each and then if we were in with a chance of a win Gino would do the last 40 and if not then we’d do 20 each. Since we were using my transponder we’d qualified 10th out of about 20 teams and Gino was doing the start since it involved running across the track which is not my forte!

When the flag dropped Gino ran across the track jumped on the bike fired it up and blasted into second banging in to a couple of people on the way. For the first couple of laps he was behind Dave Warburton, a very handy rider on a very nice 1198S then he got past and Dave had a great riding lesson from a World Champion. To his credit he hung on for a few laps before Gino pulled away and we were in the lead! Putting in consistent 1.43s and the odd 1.42 he lapped most of the field. Dave stopped after 30 mins to hand over to Stevie Cusick his team mate who raced in the R1 cup at BSB last year, and 10 mins later Gino came in with a big lead. Dicky did a good job of switching transponders and I was quickly away. The whole of the first lap I was saying to myself ‘cold tyres, cold tyres’ but by the end of the lap they felt good so I nailed it on to the start finish straight. I just concentrated on being consistent and hitting my marks every lap, and I saw very few other riders out there. Every lap was a 1.52 or 53 and I passed a few riders but nobody passed me. I was keeping an eye in the mirrors for Stevie, and I was beginning to think he wouldn’t pass me before the end of the session, but about 2 laps before I was due to come in he caught me. He got about 5 or 6 seconds on me but then I came in and Gino went out again. When they stopped Gino passed them and stayed out to win the race by a long way. The best bit was that they were letting the Moto2 bikes and the 125 teams out while we were out there and Gino caught and passed a Moto2 bike on his 5 year old stock 750 with shagged tyres! I think they’ve got some work to do there.

So a little podium ceremony with Cruzcampo, Gerry had forgotten the cups so no trophies, but what the hell. What a great day! I had a few beers with Jesus again at his truck and went back to the hotel. Everyone was taking the piss out of me for cheating but as I said ‘The secret of endurance racing is to pick your teammate’ Gino’s a good lad and I hope he goes far. He was riding this nothing fun race as hard as he’d ride in a World Championship, he’s only got 2 speeds: off and 100% I was very impressed. We went for a meal further along the front that night, I wanted to go to a Paella place I’d spotted but I was outvoted and went to a trendy bar thet wasn’t particularly good although they did a nice paella which I shared with Steve, Sarah and Dicky. It was huge, but the wine wasn’t very good.I was drinking in the hotel bar till 2 with Andy, a mechanic in the IDM and Gino’s dad Dave. When they started discussing the exact horsepower figures of every bike in the Superstock Championship I knew it was time for bed!

I was tired that night and slept well. I got up at about 9 and rode to the track, went around saying goodbye to everyone, put some air in the tyres and set off home. Although it was a little cold in the high mountains around Granada and Guadix it soon warmed up as I descended and by Antequera the sun was warm again. I was home by 2.30 and tucking into a delicious chicken curry Mandy had made by 3pm.

It was one of the best trips ever, and the trip that Racedays put on was unparalleled. Everything worked really well the quality of the instructors was fantastic, the format gave a lot of variety. The best thing though was the quality of the riders on track. Everyone was really good and a lot were household names. Everywhere you looked in the paddock was a face you recognised and some really interesting bikes from some top teams. I don’t think any of the punters had a bad word to say about it, and as for me, well if you’d told me last month when I was watching Gino Rea win the championship on the telly that I’d be standing on a podium with him a month later I’d have called you a liar!

[Ducati Pete]

Great report Dave.

That's a lot of miles in a week!
I raced against Gino in '06. To be fair, I started on the same grid, I was never in the same race!

Did you have a little bottle of bubbly on the podium?

[Weeksy]

Superb mate top write up

[irie]

Blimey, how do you write so much? I can only remember a fraction of what happened, but you seem to have total recall!

And that Gino, he's an alien, he really is.