My ’09 website is up and running and doesn’t it look the part? My mate Stewarty has done a great job pimping it out. ‘Twitter’ is a great addition to the site, updates will be regular throughout testing, training, racing and just general day to day goings on.

Tomorrow I’ll be back on track to begin my preseason testing schedule. Right now I’m sat in Parkalgar’s race truck at the Spanish circuit of Almeria and I’m peaking having had my first glimpse of my new bike! Stealth mode looks mean. We have two days on track here before moving onto my team’s track in Portimao. We’ll treat this as a shakedown test so that we can arrive in Portugal ready to take on all comers. Everyone will be testing at Portimao as it’s an official test so that will give us a good indication of where we stand before we head down under for round one.

At the beginning of the month I enjoyed a week’s skiing in Austria with my friends McFeely, Dysey and his girlfriend Gilly. My old buddy Ariane Frank (in no way referring to your age Ms Frank), formerly of Red Bull UK, and her boyfriend Barry joined us on the slopes for a few days. It was great to learn a thing or two from Ari rather than just trying to go fast or looking out for jumps on the off piste! Ok I still did both but to a lesser degree. It’s crazy the speeds you get up to onboard the two planks, we seen 96kph appear on my Garmin and I reckon 120 was possible.

I’ll keep you posted throughout the test, fingers crossed we get off to a good start.

Eugene