New Team, New Season, Same Old British Weather! 2025 UK Testing Begins!
Feels good to be back! After a much-needed two-week breather at home post-MotoAmerica, it was time to swap sunshine for, well, typical English skies! Yep, I'm back in Europe, specifically the UK, for a super exciting reason: the first preseason tests with my brand new team ahead of the 2025 British Talent Cup! I won't lie, the anticipation has been building ever since we signed the contract late last year. Starting a new season is always a buzz, but doing it with a completely new squad adds a whole other level of excitement (and maybe a few tiny butterflies!).
Arriving Tuesday morning, I was greeted by that wonderfully unpredictable English weather – grey skies and drizzle, how I've missed you (kidding!). But the real welcome was getting back together with my awesome English family, the Bowes. Seriously the best hosts, and it was great catching up with George after so long. The week involved settling in and keeping sharp with some training before the main event: rolling into the Donington Park paddock! Meeting the new team face-to-face for the first time was fantastic. The atmosphere was instantly positive – lots of laughs, everyone seems super cool, and there's just a great, relaxed energy in the garage. They've really made me feel welcome, which is the best possible start! That positive vibe has me absolutely pumped to get going tomorrow.
We've done the track walk, had some food, and now it's focus time for two big days of testing. Can't wait to finally spin some laps with the new crew! Bring on 2025!
So, Friday morning arrived, and after all the buildup and meeting the guys, it was finally time to actually throw a leg over the bike and roll out of the Donington Park pit lane for Day 1! Honestly, heading out for that first test, the mindset wasn't about chasing blistering lap times straight away. It was purely about getting seat time – finding that comfortable feeling on a new machine, building confidence lap by lap, and maybe most importantly, starting to really build that team chemistry. Getting to know how Keith (my Crew Chief) and the mechanics work, and letting them get used to my feedback – that was priority one.
Rolling down pit lane for the first session, heart hammering a bit? Definitely! But honestly, those first laps felt... positive. Really positive! Of course, there was a whole list of things popping into my head that we could work on and improve – there always is with a new bike! – but the crucial thing was that the initial comfort was there. I wasn't fighting the bike, I could feel what it was doing, and that baseline feeling had me really excited about the potential. We made a few adjustments based on that first run, and Session 2 felt like another solid step forward. Just chipping away, making progress, and heading in the right direction. It felt good.
And speaking of things feeling good, a key aspect of this year that I’m genuinely so grateful for is having Alan, my data technician for the last three years, make the move to this new team with me. Me and Alan just have this super strong connection; we understand each other without needing loads of explanation, and we work together really efficiently. Having that familiar working relationship already in place within a new environment is massive. After the second session, the three of us – Keith, Alan and I – had a proper debrief. We dove into the data, talked through the feeling on track, and came up with a clear plan to keep improving for the final session of the day.
We woke up Saturday morning to find that the Donington clouds had definitely delivered overnight! It had rained quite a bit, meaning our first session of Day 2 was going to be a proper wet one. Honestly? I was actually pretty excited about that! You can never have too much wet track time, especially early in the season, and it felt like a great, unexpected opportunity for us to start finding a comfortable wet setup right away. We headed out on some relatively older wet tyres we had, just to get a feel for things, and even so, the feeling with the bike was still really strong and confidence-inspiring. That definitely felt like a positive sign for how the rest of the day might unfold, wet or dry.
As the track started drying out for the second session, I naturally began to push the pace a bit more, exploring the limits and getting a better feel for the bike at speed. As I did, I started to notice this slightly vague feeling coming from the front end – nothing terrifying, but just enough to make me a little hesitant compared to the day before. I had quite a few little 'moments,' those small slides or warnings the bike gives you when you're right on the edge. Back in the garage, we put our heads together – looked at the data, talked through what I was feeling, and came up with a solid plan to try and dial that feeling out for the last session.
Unfortunately, we never really got the chance to see if our plan would work. About halfway through that final run, I started to feel the bike progressively losing power. You know that sinking feeling when something just isn't quite right mechanically? At first, I tried to ride through it, hoping it might clear, but then it got worse – the bike wouldn't even rev up properly on the downshifts anymore. That's when I knew I had to bring it in. I was literally pulling into the pits when the engine completely cut out. Stone dead. Had to just roll my way down pit lane back to the team. And just like that, our session, and effectively our Donington test, was over. But hey, that's how testing goes sometimes – you find the gremlins! The good news is, we already had another one-day test lined up just a couple of days later at Oulton Park, and the plan was always to run a brand new bike there anyway. So, while it was a bit of a downer to finish Day 2 like that, we quickly shifted our focus forward. On to Oulton and a fresh machine!
After a few days we loaded up and headed straight over to the beautiful, challenging Oulton Park circuit. I arrived there with Rich, my super cool team owner, both of us buzzing and ready to make the most of our one-day test scheduled for the next day. Like I mentioned before, the plan for Oulton was always to roll out my actual 2025 race bike – brand new, straight from the crate. You can imagine how eager I was to finally hop on the bike for the season! The team got busy transferring all our settings and baseline setup from the Donington bike, getting everything dialed in, and before I knew it, Tuesday morning arrived and it was time for the test to begin.
Rolling down pit lane for that first session... wow. I don't know how else to explain it, but from the very first lap, I could just tell: this bike felt like mine. It was like an instant connection, like we were already flowing together. That slightly vague front-end feeling I'd been chasing a bit at Donington? Completely gone. The bike just felt planted, predictable... it just worked. The session unfortunately got red-flagged partway through, and slightly amusingly, that's when we realized my rear brake pedal wasn't actually connected! A small oversight in the rush to get the new bike built! Since there was only going to be one lap after the restart, we decided it was better just to roll her back to the awning and get it sorted properly for Session 2. Despite that little drama, that immediate positive feeling was undeniable. I was absolutely loving the bike already.
Heading out for the second session, this time with a fully functioning rear brake (!), that positive vibe just continued and grew. The bike and I really felt like we were working in harmony. Lap after lap, things felt smoother, the confidence built, the times kept dropping steadily, and we actually ended up quickest in both of the first two sessions! Back in the garage, the feedback I was giving the team was just smiles and thumbs-ups – honestly, nothing but positives.
But you know how it is, even when things feel great, you always wonder... can we make it even better? We decided to try a specific setup change for the last session, just exploring a different direction based on the data and my feeling. I went out, did a few laps, and... OH. MY. GOD. Seriously, it was a night-and-day difference, and absolutely in the right way! The bike felt transformed, even more confidence-inspiring. I managed to drop another seven-tenths off my lap time almost immediately! And here’s the kicker – I was still running on the exact same set of tyres I'd used for all of the second day at Donington, PLUS all the laps we'd already done here at Oulton. That tyre was seriously old, well past its peak grip! To find that much time on old rubber... that felt HUGE. It's a super strong sign for me and the whole team about the bike's potential.
That final run cemented a fantastic day – we ended up topping all three sessions! Like I said when we started this whole testing journey, the main goal wasn't about slapping on new tires every five minutes and chasing a headline lap times. It was genuinely about building that crucial team relationship, getting to know each other as people and how we work together, and finding a really positive base setup with the bike that makes me feel confident. And honestly? Sitting here after the Oulton test, I can confidently say we absolutely smashed both of those goals out of the park this week. I am absolutely loving the atmosphere within this team, the way everyone works together is brilliant. And after how good the bike felt at Oulton... man, I am more excited than EVER to get Round 1 underway in just under a month from now! (Remembering the current date is May 5th, 2025). Cannot wait for this season to officially begin! Bring it on!
Buzzing from that awesome day at Oulton Park, there was barely time to catch my breath! With the UK testing wrapped up on such a high note – feeling great about the bike and gelling so well with the team – it was straight onto a plane the next day. Destination: sunny Spain! The plan now is to base myself here near Barcelona for the next two and a half weeks or so, right up until it's time to head back to the UK for the actual first race week of the British Talent Cup season. I'll be knuckling down and training hard with the brilliant guys at RidersFormation, just using this time to get super sharp, stay bike-fit, and mentally focused before the lights finally go out for Race 1.
And speaking of training, I actually got a really cool, unexpected opportunity almost as soon as I landed! I got an invite from a great guy named Pablo Nadal to come and race in the Rocco’s Ranch Cup, which is a super fun flat track event held locally. An offer to go racing? Obviously, I had to say yes – more time on two wheels is always good time, right?!
It's actually a pretty crazy story how I even connected with Pablo in the first place. It wasn't even me who met him initially – it was my Dad! He randomly bumped into Pablo and got chatting with him in the Miami airport earlier this year, when Dad was flying out for the COTA MotoAmerica round! They swapped details, we stayed in touch online, and I finally got to meet Pablo properly just last weekend when I arrived in Spain. Then boom, an invite to go flat track racing! Sometimes the world connects people in funny ways.
Racing the cup was such a blast! Flat track is incredibly fun and seriously good training for throttle control and feeling grip. We jumped on a Honda for the event, which definitely made us stand out – it felt like us against a whole flock of green Kawasaki's out there! But honestly, considering that, I reckon we did pretty good and held our own. It was just a fantastic experience, really laid-back atmosphere but still properly competitive. Huge thanks again to Pablo for the invite and making me feel so welcome – fingers crossed we get the chance to do it again sometime soon!
So yeah, that was a fun little racing detour to kick off my time in Spain! But like I said, the main mission now is settling in here near Barcelona for the next couple of weeks. It’s all about pure training, focusing on fitness, and getting fully prepared, mentally and physically, before it’s finally… RACE TIME! Seriously, after those positive tests, I cannot wait to get the BTC season started for real. Let the final countdown begin!
