A racer's diary... Me, José Terré

Today is a special day for PlusMoto.com, because we are starting a collaboration that we are really excited about, because we will have the first-person view of racing, since nobody can describe that feeling better than a racer, so today we begin a new adventure alongside the MotoDes racer José Terré.

I don’t want to go on much longer, so I’ll leave you this link with information about number 12 and his Facebook page, and you can take the chance to ask all your questions to an active racer.

A racer’s diary…. Me, José Terré

First of all, I want to thank everyone who is with me on this adventure that began barely a year and a half ago. Starting to name names would surely look bad, since I would certainly forget someone, bless my head…

It would be very easy to start by saying “hello, my name is José and I’m a racer” but the intention of this diary is to show you that getting into the world of racing is more affordable than many of you think, even though, as in most motorsports, money rules, but we’ll get into that week by week. Besides, I don’t want to paint a rosy picture of reality either, since the level in Spain is very high and that applies at every level (even in the regional championships, which is where we are this season). It is clear that physical preparation, training, diet, bike setup and mindset have a huge influence; iron discipline is needed to be, or try to be, up front, and anyone who tells you otherwise is deceiving you to take your spot.

My move into racing happened a bit by chance, or rather it was my partner who suggested I race in the CMV (Mediterranean Speed Championship) instead of going to some open track days, since it came out cheaper…(money… is a word I will mention a lot), so it was an interesting adventure, but the truth is that neither my wife nor I knew what we were getting into.

Without hesitating, I showed up at the circuit on Friday alone, with no tools, with nobody to accompany me, no pit box, nothing, a disaster. Suffice it to say that I had to ask for help just to get the bike down from the van, and afterwards some charitable souls let me use a space in their pit box and helped me enormously that weekend.

I have to say that when I arrived at the circuit and saw the trucks of some of the teams in the distance, I almost felt like turning around and going home to play MotoGP on the Xbox. I had gotten into a huge story without preparing for it, but now I couldn’t back out, and it didn’t turn out too badly, since my goal was to qualify and in the end I qualified and managed some decent times with my street GSXR 600.

That was when we got motivated and decided to do the whole championship, but a crash in a Supermotard training session, along with a dislocated shoulder ruined the whole season I had set in motion. After 3 months of recovery, visiting the surgeon and having surgery for compartment syndrome (the ailment of almost all racers), we decided to take on the entire Catalan Speed Cup.

Many of you will ask why I went to the extreme of having surgery. Well, it was necessary whether I wanted to get into racing or simply wanted to keep riding a street bike, so making that decision wasn’t hard, and in this life if you want to achieve something you have to put everything on the line; half measures don’t work, and in the world of racing even less so.

Explaining how the whole of last season went is not the intention of this diary, I prefer to tell you about current things, although I will say that I had a great time last season, I had very tough rivals, many of them are back for the same championship this season and I know they are putting up a great fight. Despite making it very difficult for me, we managed to win the championship, so we closed out 2011 as Catalan Speed Cup Champions.

This 2012 we had to retire the GSX-R that had given us so much joy but it was already “getting old” to compete with all the “beasts” on the grid lately; four years is a long time for a racing bike, unless you race classics. So after thinking it over a lot, since I and everyone around me love CHALLENGES, we decided to buy a Triumph Daytona 675, and sign up for MotoDes, a championship of a very high level; suffice it to say that some CEV riders are also taking part in this championship this year, so imagine the level.

As for the Triumph, I have only been able to ride it 3 times this year but I’m absolutely delighted, I’ll share things about it as we go, every time I get on it I’m surprised, it’s as if they took the best of the twins and the best of the fours and fused them into one bike, it’s very special.

Before saying goodbye and writing next week after this weekend’s race at the Jerez Circuit, I want to thank all the companies that are helping me, which in the end boils down to great people/friends who are fans of the motor world, and without them, as cliché as it sounds, none of this would be possible: QualityBike, Maquina Motors, Sportmototeam, Zammergames, InteRoad, Logostar, Elf, Plusmoto.com, and a long etc.

Behind the names of these companies there are real people whose names will come up over these weeks, many of them well worth getting to know. And of course, my team manager, one of the great protagonists of this adventure, methodical and a real perfectionist, you’ll get to know her soon.

Well, that’s all for now, next week more and better.

Best regards.