Hoping for a Wild Card ride at Laguna Seca.

I just returned from testing the Kawasaki MotoGP bike in Japan for two days, one of which was rained out.

I've been to Japan a few times now and am really starting to like it over there. It's a little different but not too bad on most fronts. I can do everything in Japan except the food.

Even the food in Japan's not too bad. Definitely their sushi's different than the sushi in America. It's the real deal. One night, we all went to dinner at this place, you take your shoes off when you walk in, you sit on the ground. It wasn't too comfortable. It was definitely not Kentucky style. The guy beside me was eating raw liver. That is literally what we use for fishing bait here in Kentucky. This guy was just eating it like it was good. But they had steak and stuff, there was a little grill in front of you and you cooked it yourself. It was pretty good, but I wasn't about to try the raw liver. I let them keep it.

Backtracking, going into Utah I was looking forward to having a good weekend, because my weekend at Road America was anything but. Nothing seemed to go right, and I really struggled. That's all I want to say about that weekend. I was really looking forward to another race to try to get things turned around. The team and I decided to do a little bit of promoter practice on the 600 at Utah. I caught a lot of flak for it in the press, and people saying we shouldn't be doing it. But the bottom line is, at Road America I had a problem Friday morning with the 600, had to catch a ride back in. I got about 20 minutes of practice Friday morning. Saturday it was raining both sessions. So my first real practice was Sunday morning. And the class is just too competitive to leave anything on the table like that. It came to Sunday morning at Road America and there were still two tires I hadn't tested yet.

So when we got to Miller, we decided to maybe ride a few sessions of promoter practice and get a few things sorted out straightaway. As it turned out, everything was so smooth that it didn't really help that much. I didn't really go much faster from the first practice session I did to the end of the weekend.

Overall, Salt Lake was a good weekend for me. Friday morning I had a small crash on the 600 when I just made a stupid mistake. I got into one of the corners too hot; I thought to myself I should stand it up and just run wide, but I knew I had a good lap going, so I tried to make the corner anyway, and next thing I know I'm baseball sliding out in the dirt. That's the way it goes. I went back out in the session and went a little bit faster. The bike was working really good. I really enjoy that track. It's nice and flowing, and there's plenty of runoff. So it's always fun when we get to go there and ride.

Then we got on the Superbike. Straightaway I was going pretty good on it, too. I was P2 for most of the morning, and ended up third quick. That's not too bad, considering the way some things have been this season on the Superbike. I felt pretty comfortable, but I thought I could go a little bit faster. I was still fighting and struggling with a few things. During the afternoon qualifying, I changed the bike around, and I actually didn't go as fast. So Saturday morning, we went back to what we had started out with, and ended up qualifying on the front row, which is pretty nice. It was a relief, because the last couple races I've been on the third row. I keep telling myself that I'm always getting bad starts and qualifying bad, and I can improve my result if I qualify a little better. So I put it on the front row, which gave me some encouragement. Plus, I haven't been on the front row a lot.

The Saturday Superbike race went pretty good. It took me a while to get going, and I was in fourth, just riding around, and I finally got on pace. Jake came past me and put a little gap on me, and I spent the rest of the race catching up to him. I ended up fourth, which was a pretty good result--for me. We were just struggling with power getting off the corners, and a few other places. I was disappointed because I wasn't as fast as I'd been going in practice. I did some :50s in practice, but in the race it just seemed like I couldn't find the pace to do that. I was disappointed in myself with that, because I can usually count on myself to go faster in the race than I qualified. It was a little disappointing, but another top five, a good run for me. It would've been nice to get on the podium, being that close.

We qualified the Supersport bike on Friday, too. I qualified second after Jamie put in a really fast lap. My 600 was good all weekend and I was doing :54s in practice, with traffic and everything else. I felt really confident on that for the race. Everything just seemed to go real smooth. But when it came time to race on Sunday, on our warm-up lap I could feel I had a little bit of a problem in the front end. It was too late to do anything about it then because I got a bad front tire, and I was losing the front everywhere, and after about the second lap, I had to tell myself just to try not to crash. Every time I went into the Esses, I lost the front end big time. I thought I was down. Then I went into Turn Two, same thing. Then the next lap, I went into Turn Three and lost the front end big. I'd been doing :54s all weekend without any problem, and now it felt like I was on the edge just to do one. I just had to back it down and try to bring it home. I got fifth, which is not a very good result. It could've been a good day to make up some points on Josh, because he was having some problems of his own. But it wasn't meant to be. We're still in the thick of the championship, so I guess I should be happy.

...deep down I knew Mat just took a big crash. So it didn't really do much for my confidence having to battle some guy they had to scrape up off the ground about 20 minutes beforehand.

There was three times I thought I was already down because I lost the front end so bad. I was bummed after the race. But that's the way it goes sometimes.

The Superbike race was up next. Things were going pretty good. I got a pretty good start, and I was just following Jamie around. Then I had a big moment going into Turn Three, kind of like what Eric did the day before. I ran off the track, and that moved me back to eighth. So the red flag helped me out a lot when Mat had his crash. I was on the second row this time, but I got another good start. I hung on in fourth for a while, then Mat came by me. My pace was kind of slow up until then, so I tried to go faster and hang with him. I did, but then Miguel came by, and we basically spent the rest of the race chasing those guys, on their heels. I never got close enough to them to make a pass. I passed Mladin once for about half a corner. As good as it felt to be racing those guys for the podium, deep down I knew Mat just took a big crash. So it didn't really do much for my confidence having to battle some guy they had to scrape up off the ground about 20 minutes beforehand.

But it was a good race. With two laps to go, going into Turn Five, I got in really good. I went around the outside of Miguel, and I wish I'd have gone to the inside, because I think I was going fast enough to pass him. It's one of those times I keep replaying in the back of my head. Maybe I could've, maybe I couldn't have. But either way, it was a solid weekend for me. The Superbike went good. Two top fives, I battled for the podium each day. That's more than I can say for any other weekend. Hopefully we can get better. The team and I, we're definitely not happy to be fourth and fifth. We definitely want to be battling up front. But for once, I didn't get beat by over 30 seconds. That was good.

So then after that, we had the Virginia test. Things went pretty smooth there, but the track seemed rougher than usual, and a little bit slicker. It seemed like I was sliding around a bit more. From Virginia, it was straight on to Japan.

I'm sure people have read that there's a chance I might ride the Kawasaki GP bike as a wild card at Laguna. That would be a great opportunity for me. I was really excited to get over there and ride the MotoGP bike. It's always been a dream for any kid, I think, when he first starts out roadracing, to ride MotoGP. For me, definitely, if I feel like I can improve, that's a path I would take. Mike Preston, the team manager, flew over with me that Saturday. I've been there a few other times testing with the production team.

The Autopolis track is kind of weird. It's 35 minutes up a mountain, and depending on which Japanese driver you get, it can be like a 35 minute rollercoaster. It's real windey, straight up and down. Sometimes my stomach feels so bad once I get to the top, I don't even know if I can ride.

Anyway, the first day of the test got rained out, which was kind of boring, just sitting at the track while it was raining all day. That was a bummer. Then the second day, when I woke up, it was raining again. Usually when it's raining at the hotel, it's guaranteed to be raining at the top of the mountain. I was thinking, "Man, if I flew all the way over here to watch it rain" -- it had literally been raining since I landed. But we got to the track, and it's dry. The track surface was still damp, but the guy said, "We're starting in 30 minutes." I was thinking I didn't really want my first real laps on the MotoGP bike to be half wet. I rode Valencia last year, but I only got a couple of laps in.

So I went out and did a few laps in the wet. Some corners were dry, and some were wet. We just waited an hour and got on the track about 11:00 in the morning.

You hear stories, so in my head I was thinking how scary a MotoGP bike is, and how unbelievable the power's going to be. But my first couple of laps riding, I thought, 'Man, this thing's a nice bike.' It shifts good, it was smaller than my 600. Yanagawa was there, so that was nice. He helped me with a few things, like carbon brakes. That took a little while to get used to. One thing that helped me was that I'd been to the track before. It was just a fun bike. It was almost like riding a 250, almost. It's so small and so nimble, and the power's so smooth and easy to get to the ground. Honestly, the thing was easier to ride than my Superbike, I felt like. So we got a little bit more than a half day, and everything seemed to go pretty good. My lap time was pretty good.

They haven't told me for sure that I'm doing Laguna. By the time you read this, they might have made an announcement one way or the other. But after the test, I'm feeling pretty good about my chances of riding Laguna. That would be an awesome opportunity for me to ride the home GP, and I really look forward to it. It would be really cool if Miguel gets to ride, too.

The electronics on the bike blew me away, because they've got wheelie control, traction control. When you start to spin, you can feel the bike starting to slow down. It was like riding around - it felt like somebody was pulling the choke. Anybody that's ridden a bike, when you put the choke on. Or when you wheelie, you can feel the front end of the bike start to go down straightaway. That was nice. Even backshifting, you didn't even have to use the clutch and it wouldn't upset the bike or anything like that. Coming out of the corners, you could really hammer it. You can get the tire down better than I could on any bike I've ever ridden, besides a 600.

The funny thing is, I guess, it would accelerate so much and rev so high, you're just shifting non-stop. You're grabbing gears as fast as you can get them. The bike was definitely nice, for sure. I kept getting better each time I went out. I didn't want to ride too hard and do anything too crazy. All in all, it went really good. It was definitely cool. I enjoyed it.

I'll see everybody at Laguna Seca. Hopefully I'll be on a MotoGP bike there.