We had an early start for the Superbike race on Saturday and was up at the paddock for 8am, getting my visors prepared and the like. I put little white marks on them where the visor has top clip into the helmet just to help Warren when he does the change at the pit stops. After that, I spent a bit of time walking round trying to think about anything else but the race.

That's really hard though as the first race is the one that's on your mind the most. Once it's out the way, it's not so bad and with pretty much everything set up the day before, you just have to get on with it. The Superbike race was going well up until I got to Ginger Hall on the first lap when the bike started handling badly and I thought 'oh god, here we go, this is going to be a long race'. The best way of describing it was that it was unpredictable. It wouldn't do anything massive but every now and then it would go into a wobble and I wouldn't know why.
 
The traction light, which we hadn't any trouble with, went off so we lost all the electronic aids and with all that horsepower, it was just hard to ride. I had to ride round the problem but everyone has problems here so you just have to deal with it. I had a good battle with Gary (Johnson) and Dean (Harrison) on the roads which was really good and took my mind off the problems. When you're pushing hard, the race goes fast but when you're hanging on, thinking about the sections which are going to be hard work, it's a long race.
 
The three of us had a good race and I managed to finish sixth. I then went out for a parctice lap on the Stocker but with the unfortunate accident in the sidecar race, there was a delay and it was something like 7pm before we got out of the paddock. The lap was pretty good and I had a good run setting off from the line with John (McGuinness). I thought I'd follow him and see what I could learn but his Honda was so slow down the straights, I couldn't wait so got by and cleared off.
 
Then Hutchy passed me so I thought I'd try and hang on to him but there was no chance of that as he was absolutely flying. Then when I got to Signpost, I found a false neutral and thought 'I'm not going to tip in here'. If it was a race, I probably would have done but picked the bike up and went down the slip road.
 
That was it for the day so it was back to the house and then to the pub. I was up at the paddock on Sunday for about three hours though, talking about the 600 and what we were going to do with the Stocker and then heading out for some lunch in Castletown. For once, it was a bit of a lazy day.