Everyone should try a European track day at least once in their lifetime - the sun, sea, smooth track and holiday atmosphere combine beautifully with the fact that you're all generally booked in at the same hotel so meals and bars together make for fun nights full of tall tales and perhaps a little too much of the amber nectar.
Almeria is a beautifully set winding circuit which is smooth and long, and pretty technical. The track has very few markings to give braking and turning points so it's quite hard to learn and it's very rewarding when you start getting it right.

Quinny	Kath	Leila	Susie	Lottie

Five members of Feisty Racing (pictured above) attended the winter testing at Almeria, and we also had a few Feisty helpers along: Mark was invaluable for his mechanic prowess, track advice and being dad. Andy ferried half the team around and was generally a top chap, Phil and Kev assisted when they could, Will kept Lottie's tyres warm and Tel and Ade offered entertainment in all manner of ways!

Here's Lottie under instruction - being followed around by Mark - who in turn can't resist playing up to the camera. Lottie is new to her race R6 and spent the time getting used to the braking capability, power and handling as well as finding out how to learn a new track.

We had a few 400 problems - Sarah's (Quinny's) bike was missing a rear wheel spacer; Kath's bike after much investigation turned out to have an restriction. We spent a good day making one good bike out of the two, then Sarah and I went on a 3 hour round trip to Almeria town in search of a spacer with very little knowledge of Spanish. The picture shows us thinking we'd got the right part; we were wrong!

The comforts of the Feisty luxury transporter... our trip to the local garage to get sarnies revealed that spanish local garages don't sell sandwiches. The doughnuts weren't too bad though.

Leila struts her stuff on her new R6 as she drives onto the extremely long back straight. Leila improved her track performance after a one to one session with Superstock racer Stan Watt from Front Row GB, She also proved invaluable with her spanish linguistic skills throughout the week... even if she did almost get all of our pizzas spat on by a grumpy waitress ;-) eh Leila?

I've got a reputation to keep - and that's to come off at least once on every track. It's just an excuse to use the pink sponges really.

Kath proved to us that she's going to be a hot favourite in the Rookie 400s this year. She managed to lob Quinny's bike into the kitty litter a couple of times - but bounced back after the first to show us just how fast a Feisty 400 can take that big sweeping left-hander. A very impressive 3 days for a girl new to the 400s.

We managed to eat Italian twice and Chinese once. How did that happen? Where were the tapas bars? For this particular photo Andy insisted in being one of the girls for the photo, and the other boys look on with rumbling tums.

Terry is always hamming it up on the back wheel

The Feisty girls will be together again and in greater numbers on 19th and 20th February for the Rookie school and ACU testing at Snetterton. By then the majority of bikes should be sprayed in Feisty colours and stickered up.

Thanks to Paul and Stan of Front Row GB - a stirling bunch who none of us would hesistate to recommend to anyone wishing to go on a European track day. They are doing plenty more this year - find them here. They took the many trials thrown at them in their stride (with the help of some bottles of whiskey though!) and came through still grinning. Our thoughts go out to the Finn who took a serious 160mph highside on day one. Also a warning to anyone travelling through Spain in a van - thieves pray at service stations, and sunny mountain roads can still have ice in the shadows... can't they Paul.

Track photos are by Picture Management.