Welcome to my new column on www.bikesportnews.com. It is great to be starting it off writing about a third place finish with my Parkalgar Honda team at Valencia – maybe you’ve all brought me a bit of good luck and that bodes well for the rest of the season.

I’m very glad we weren’t at Brands Hatch I’ll bet everyone was jealous watching us in the sun while they were all there in the snow. Our weekend went really well as we had tested at Valencia three weeks ago. It has never been a strong track for me before as it just didn’t click but the level of my Parkalgar Honda team is high and helped a lot - we were bang on the pace immediately. We found a good race set-up during testing and only had to tweak it over the race weekend.

During second free practice I had a tumble, I wasn’t pushing, it was just something caught me out. I was ok but the bike was bad, I gave my mechanics a lot of work to do! The bike I crashed had the strong engine but the frame was destroyed so we had to put the engine into my spare bike and all credit to my guys as they did in time for second qualifying in the afternoon.

It was a tough race. I got stuck behind Andrew Pitt and I could see Juan Lascorz had good pace and he was getting away. Before I got a chance to pass Pitt he went down and that held me up. I got my head down for a good 10 laps but I made a mistake on one of them and that allowed Fabien Foret to pass me.

I could have had a go on the last lap but after what happened in the Superbike race with Carlos Checa knocking Max Neukirchner off I decided to keep things cool. It was touch and go so I decided to go for the points and not risk it.

For Lascorz it was his home round and I’ve got two of them later in the year where I want to do well. He is going to be strong and a contender so I need to make sure that I don’t have another round like Phillip Island.  He had a good result at Qatar but then was seventh at Phillip Island, he needs to be more consistent but on his day he will be hard to beat.

I only saw one fellow Brit on track and that was Johnny Rea; he was along side me at the first turn. I got up the inside and then I didn’t see him again as me and Foret pulled away. I decided there was no point in battling Foret as he had good pace and I thought he could pull me onto the back of Lascorz. I was weighting him up all through the race and tried to see where his weak points where. I just didn’t want to risk a move as it wasn’t worth it, I wanted the points and I need to look at the big picture which is the Championship.

I travelled down to Valencia in my new motor home with my Dad. It was a two day drive so we just chilled out and didn’t rush it. It is important to be well rested and ready for the race weekend. We are on our way back now, we have just got into France, so 699 miles to home!

I’m sponsored by Norfolk Line Ferries and I’m always last minute dot com with them. I usually arrive when they aren’t loading any more vehicles so I just ring Wayne Bullen who is the boss and he sorts it out – thanks Wayne!

I’m looking forward to Assen now, it is a good circuit and I enjoy it as it suits my style. My team are working hard on the bike to get more power out of it so hopefully we can get our first race win there.

Talk to you all again after Assen.