James Ellison's 2011 Season Review
It was an unhappy experience for the British rider way back in 2002, but he looked like being a top runner for his Bogdanka PTR Honda team pre-season in 2011, despite suffering a knee injury that needed surgery in Australia, which held him back in his first race of the year, and also having his machine break down while battling in the top positions at his home round in Donington.
From then on a small software glitch that took some time to fix plagued his season, causing him problems every time he entered corners, until the final few rounds when it was rectified.
With a more predictable bike underneath him, Ellison was able to show his true form, and secured two podiums in the last four races. We caught up with him shortly after the end of the season.
Q: You got a couple of podium finishes in 2011 but how was your return to WSS racing compared to what you expected?
A: We certainly didn't get the results we wanted and it took us a long time to work out that there had been a problems with a part the software on the bike which meant that every time I was trying to brake into corners it was accelerating me into the corner, because the throttle butterflies were being opened up. We were trying to fix it with chassis changes when it was nothing to do with the chassis. I did not have enough experience on the 600 but I could tell them what it was doing, but it took for me to ride Sam's bike at Mallory Park for ten laps or whatever to realise that something was way off. So we put all those settings in our bike. Straight away at the next round in Germany we were about a tenth or so off of winning it!
Q: It sounds like it was a season of parts then, some up, some down?
A: After Germany it was really good and I was really looking forward to being at races again. When the bike did not work I just got frustrated with it. It is difficult to enjoy it because you know you are riding as you should be but the results were not there. Every time I approached it I said, "right, let's get this thing fixed," but we could never get to the bottom of it. There was no one particular person to blame, it was just one of those things. Once we got the bike fixed I knew that there was nothing wrong with my riding style. You do not lose riding talent overnight!
Q: How competitive was WSS this time around compared to you last competitive season there in 2002?
A: It's certainly competitive. It was like that when I rode the Kawasaki in 2002, but it is still vital to get the bike set-up to work for you. The competition is as tough as it was back then, but now I have more experienced and had a good group of people behind me. It was really only the middle of the season where we struggled, at the beginning and the end it was better. I knew at the end of this year than even if I was sixth off the line I would still have a chance of the podium.
