My first track day

Saturday July 7th was my first ever track day on my bike.  My thoughts? …must.. have.. more track time…

This day was so much fun! The baby CBR did beautifully on the track. Every one with Turn 2 was great and very helpful and the day ran smoothly. 

I started off pretty nervous.. excited, but nervous. Sharing the track with bigger and faster bikes/riders was a bit intimidating, although every one was very good about passing me safely. A couple guys led me around the track and offered great pointers and instructions, thank you Phil and Mark! (and every one else who contributed advice). I essentially had the bike in 3rd all the way around the track all day long and focused on lines, turning, and some breaking. The bike would hit the rev limiter on both “streights” and would bog a little comming out of turn 7 (uphill hairpin) but staying in 3rd was sufficient. 

Towards the end of the day I was the only bike left on the track (yayyy private track!!). My footpegs and stand were scraping and caused a couple hairy moments, but all was good… untill pretty much the LAST lap of the LAST session just before I was gonna get flagged to come in. Footpeg cought turn 1 and this time around lowsided the bike.

I basically need a new shift lever and the handle bar took a little beating. The frame sliders and the fugly turn signals (which survived, those things are increadible) kept the rest of the bike pretty much untouched. 

Here’s a vid from the begining of the day:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S_juVfyZWks

And a vid from some time after the lunch break, the scraping begins:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uKP07i9MAhU

I need to get the shifter fixed and the bike is good to go. 

I also need to do something about those footpegs and kickstand. We tried trackside (before the slide ofcourse) swapping the footpegs for the passenger footpegs as they’re a little shorter and have angled ends, but they’re not swapable. They’re held in by different sized pins. So I’m looking at getting rearsets. 

I was told that I should take the kickstand off next time and get a rear stand for the bike. 

Oh yeah.. and tires. These ones did just fine (I think). The only problems I have experienced were caused by the foot pegs dragging and making the rear wheel skip on occation. I will look into picking up a set of Pirelis although I’m still not sure if that’s necessary. Once the foot peg issue is resolved I’m not sure just how much more the oem tires could give.

Over all however this has been a fabulous experience. I have to highly recommend coming out to the track with your bike to any one, just get over how intimidating it all seems at first, it really isn’t once you dip your feet in. Some people have said they want to ride on the street for a year or two before coming to the track, but I think they’re completely missing out a great learning experience. I learned so much about how my bike handles and what and how I should do on the bike to make it go how I want it to. It is so much easier to concentrate on learning to ride your bike well without having to always thing about any cars, or pedestrians, making sure I don’t go past they yellow line, the curb, intersections, traffic lights… and putting around in a parking lot sure doesn’t compare either since that parking lot ends eventually, has gravel, pot holes, parked cars, and lamp posts to watch out for. I will be highly recommending this to all of my riding friends.

Arriving at the track

Turn 1 of the RDT track

Turn 1 again

Left footpeg and kickstand took the most beating from the scraping and eventually the low side... bent shifter

Right footpeg got a little scrape action