First Race Weekend

fastblackblur

fastblackblur

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Well last week I put a post up talking about doing a little novice road racing..

https://www.hayabusa.org/forum/general-bike-related-topics/136857-what-heck-am-i-thinking.html


Well let me tell you, I had probably the most memorable week of my life! Started out with my wife showing me two little lines on a pregnancy test while I was packing up the trailer Monday night. "Oh boy this is going to be exciting week" I'm thinking. Get packed, get to bed, off I go 0530 Tuesday. Pick up my mother (we have family out in the northwest) in Missoula and my riding buddy in Spokane...off we go. About 30minutes out of Spokane, it's official! I'm going to be a dad. Does that wife of mine know how to keep me from riding 10/10ths or what? lol I make it to Seattle in about 9.5hrs, not too bad considering I'm pulling a 22ft enclosed trailer. We get to bed early because we have to get going early to beat Seattle traffic....5am rolls around, we take off and arrive at Pacific Raceways at about 0630 for our first track day with 2-Fast.

I'm going have to admit, Pacific was pretty intimidating for about the first 4 sessions. The back half of the track is kind of tough to handle at first but just gave it some time and by the end of the day we were lapping at least half of the riders in the intermediate group. I was still running my Dunlop Qualifier 2s and put out a best lap time of 1:44. Not too bad, a good enough time to jump in the novice group at least. I was spent, time for bed.

We spent Thursday napping, and took a little jaunt down to Pikes Market. Trying to recoup enough strength for Fridays track day with Adrenaline Freaks, we were successful.

We get there about the same time Friday morning, do one session and what happens? I get convinced I need racetires....
Now race tires are not cheap. I went wih the Dunlop NTEC 211's... These were my first experience with racing tires and let me tell you, you can tell pretty quickly where the extra money goes. 3 sessions after switching tires I had dropped about 6 seconds off my laps times...AMAZING. They do require warmers but if your in to this kind of stuff it's totally worth it. I know, I know they don't hold a line like a good pair of Shinko's but they were the best I could find at the track. :poke: Ended the day sparring with our very own Gregbob and Tufbusa for a few laps and for the first time I was able to actually keep up with these guys. There's an accomplishment in it's self lol. The day ended and we decided to camp out at the track to save ourselves some scrambling around in the morning. We watched the nightly drags while kicking back a couple of cold ones, I think I finally fell asleep at about 1am...just a little nervous I guess lol.

Well 630 comes around and we're ready to go. We get a couple of practice sessions to warm up, no incidents I'm ready to rock. 1115 is race time, we take our sighting lap and grid up... I'm in the back of the pack, 28 riders I'm starting at about 24th. The light goes and we're off, I'm way in the back and we have 8 laps... I'll let this space out so my first race isn't my last. The traffic was worse than I had anticipated and I probably lost tire temperature we were going so slow lol. Somewhere during the 2nd lap I figure out that it's time to pick this up and start working my way through the pack. When it was all said and done I had moved up to 12th place in the 6th lap when the race was red flagged due to somebody crashing. Probably had too bad of a start to move up much farther than that anyhow. My first race was over, i'm fine, the bike is fine, life is good.

Sunday Sunday Sunday.... what a disappointment. Through the randomness of the griding system I'm in the 3rd row. Pretty good really... We've been briefed we only have 6 laps today due to the heat so a good start is imperative. The light turns colors we take off and since I can actually see daylight through the traffic this time I go for it. The pack starts to separate and I'm in 6th. We get to the front strait and good'ol liter bike gets me to 4th, out of turn 2 I get to 3rd. Whats going on here? I get passed out of turn 4, didn't like that I'll get him back out of 6. I'm coming up on 5, I tap the brake, OH CRAP I'm starting to push the front! Blow turn 5 go diving into the gravel pit, spend all of 4seconds in the gravel felt like 4minutes lol... I'm ok, re-enter the track at the turn 6 exit, actually moved back up to 3rd. I'm waiving the guy I just passed ahead, not a very cool way to pass a guy and whats this? Red Flags? While I was showing off the off road capability of my GSXR someone went down in turn 2, pretty banged up... race rescheduled for 4pm.

From what I was told the traffic had everyone held up so bad behind us i was all but guaranteed a top 5 finish. Which would have been amazing for my maiden voyage, but it was not to be. We decided to stop tempting fate for the day and pack it up...getting home at 6am didn't sound like much fun so eastward we went. I rolled in to my driveway about 3am...still totally pumped from possibly the best week of my life!:thumbsup:


Here is a highlights vid from the 2 Fast track day...more vids to come as I get them up.

Highlights from my 2Fast track day 8/11/2010 on Vimeo

see me doing stupid crap in the vid call me out, still learning here:cheerleader:
 
Good Job Gary! Next time leave the original sound in the video. Hard to critique without the sound.

If you are doing sub-forties you should move to the advanced group. You'll learn more at a faster pace.

Congrats on a great start at novice racing! :thumbsup:

Two days with Sully in Spokane September 29th & October 1st. We'll get you into the advanced group!
 
Thanks for sharing.:beerchug:

That looks like a lot of fun. That's something that I've always to do. One of these days.:please:
 
Hope I'm not jacking your thread....just trying to learn from this experience.




Question....when going into a turn, should you/I be totally OFF the gas when tipping it into the turn until we're leaned over to where we want to be, then on the gas as you go through the turn, or are you on the gas AS you're tipping it in ?

I swear I'm going to get the hang of this one of these years :laugh:
 
kennym4 said:
I LOVE the video's !!! Thank you for posting them !!

How fast are you guys going out of that turn at 2:30 in this (2'nd video) one ?
Click to expand...

the last little turn/kink before the strait is called the bus stop. On my better laps I only get down to about 35mph or so before I'm back on the throttle. Sometimes though it will be slower than that due to traffic. From there you blast down the strait. Fast guys are hitting 170 I think, this slow guy only gets up to about 145-150. On my fastest lap I only hit 140 down the strait so definitely some room for improvement there.

kennym4 said:
Hope I'm not jacking your thread....just trying to learn from this experience.




Question....when going into a turn, should you/I be totally OFF the gas when tipping it into the turn until we're leaned over to where we want to be, then on the gas as you go through the turn, or are you on the gas AS you're tipping it in ?

I swear I'm going to get the hang of this one of these years :laugh:
Click to expand...


No problem, happy to help:beerchug:

I try to either be on the brake or on the gas all the time... allot of work to do on that though lol. I usually trail brake quite a bit, so for me it's roll-off gas, roll on brake, turn bike, roll off brake, roll on gas. Some turns, like the ones on the front strait, are done at full throttle. Generally speaking I'm not rolling on throttle until the bike has already been tipped in to the corner.

The real trick to all of this is good instruction and seat time.
 
Well it took abit of time for me to read that! but great vids, I'm getting a r6 soon, will be fun to start doing corners fast again, I just can't get the handle of it on my busa...
Nice riding tho :bowdown:
 
AWESOME video.. I've always wanted to do exactly that. One day when I grow up... I wanna be just like you.. hahaha.. thanks for sharing
 
fastblackblur said:
the last little turn/kink before the strait is called the bus stop. On my better laps I only get down to about 35mph or so before I'm back on the throttle. Sometimes though it will be slower than that due to traffic. From there you blast down the strait. Fast guys are hitting 170 I think, this slow guy only gets up to about 145-150. On my fastest lap I only hit 140 down the strait so definitely some room for improvement there.




No problem, happy to help:beerchug:

I try to either be on the brake or on the gas all the time... allot of work to do on that though lol. I usually trail brake quite a bit, so for me it's roll-off gas, roll on brake, turn bike, roll off brake, roll on gas. Some turns, like the ones on the front strait, are done at full throttle. Generally speaking I'm not rolling on throttle until the bike has already been tipped in to the corner.

The real trick to all of this is good instruction and seat time.
Click to expand...

I REALLY do appreciate it !!

I've heard people say, "you should come off the brake as smooth as you got on it" . Is this true ? And what is "trail braking" ? Is it just being on the brakes through,or into the turn ? Rear brake ? That's kinda advanced, correct ?
 
kennym4 said:
I REALLY do appreciate it !!

I've heard people say, "you should come off the brake as smooth as you got on it" . Is this true ? And what is "trail braking" ? Is it just being on the brakes through,or into the turn ? Rear brake ? That's kinda advanced, correct ?
Click to expand...

Yes coming off brake should be smooth, it keeps the front end from decompressing too fast, thus making the bike unstable. Yes trail braking is just being on the brakes while turning the bike. It is very important to be smooth coming off the brake while leaned over, sudden changes can cause a loss of traction. I don't think of trail braking as an advanced technique, I was doing it before even knew what it was. As far as the rear brake goes... at this point I have zero use for it. I haven't used my rear brake on any of my bikes for 2yrs other than making sure it works after a tire change.

Vega said:
Very cool vids! Sucks for the guy who went down at 6:12...

Thanks for sharing! :thumbsup:
Click to expand...

Yea, I've seen a few of those this year. Not sure why he went down, I'm guessing he went in to the corner a little fast for his liking and on a diffent line then got on the brake too hard.
 
fastblackblur said:
Yes coming off brake should be smooth, it keeps the front end from decompressing too fast, thus making the bike unstable. Yes trail braking is just being on the brakes while turning the bike. It is very important to be smooth coming off the brake while leaned over, sudden changes can cause a loss of traction. I don't think of trail braking as an advanced technique, I was doing it before even knew what it was. As far as the rear brake goes... at this point I have zero use for it. I haven't used my rear brake on any of my bikes for 2yrs other than making sure it works after a tire change.



Yea, I've seen a few of those this year. Not sure why he went down, I'm guessing he went in to the corner a little fast for his liking and on a diffent line then got on the brake too hard.
Click to expand...

I don't use my rear brake either, unless it's in traffic, or straight roads.



Doesn't braking into the turn make the bike want to stand up though ? My father does that on his Harley (brake through the turn) He said that's how they taught them when he was getting trained to be a motorcycle cop ?

THANKS again, I want to learn SOOOO BAD !! I REALLY need to do a track day, huh ?
 
hey thanks for the story great stuff cant wait to get home and watch the vid sounds like so much fun bro keep up the good work....oh yeah and i guess congrats right on your wifes preg test!!!! :thumbsup:
 
kennym4 said:
I don't use my rear brake either, unless it's in traffic, or straight roads.



Doesn't braking into the turn make the bike want to stand up though ? My father does that on his Harley (brake through the turn) He said that's how they taught them when he was getting trained to be a motorcycle cop ?

THANKS again, I want to learn SOOOO BAD !! I REALLY need to do a track day, huh ?
Click to expand...

When I'm turning in under braking I'm not full on the brakes. I do most of the braking in a strait line then while tapering off I'll turn in. After I have the bike pointed about where I want it to go(usualy about the apex) it's back on the gas.

You'll know when your ready for the track. For me it came to me one day while I was hitting some corners on rogers pass at way to high of speeds, after a day of hitting corners at way too high of speeds and couldn't ignore the risks I was taking any longer.
 
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