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Gingerman Track Weekend, August 18-19


elizilla

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gingerman2.jpg

I recently I took the VFR to the racetrack for two days.

For those who don't know, here's the basic scoop on how this works. The group that organizes these events is called Sportbike Track Time. STT divides the riders up into three groups, Novice, Intermediate, and Advanced. Each group gets to be on the track for twenty minutes each hour. The Novice group is for beginners and those who seek continued instruction; in addition to 20 minutes on the track each hour, Novice riders are required to attend a 20 minute classroom session each hour, and they are given strict rules for how to ride during each track session. If you've done Novice before, and you so choose, you can go to Intermediate. Intermediate usually has the most crashes, since it's less structured and has more people who are trying to prove something. Advanced is for people who have racing licenses, or who STT invites based on how well they ride.

The other cool thing about STT, is that they offer discount pricing to women riders, so it's pretty cheap for me to ride with them.

I've done STT track days before, so I'm eligible to go to Intermediate. But I am slow and I know it, so I have continued to ride with Novice. The lessons are the same every day, and last weekend was my fifth and six time with these lessons. I just don't learn this kind of stuff very fast. And after this past weekend I am still slow.

Here is how the STT day goes:

7am - Tech and registration open. Everyone needs to have newish tires, good brakes, and a throttle that snaps back on its own, and they must remove/tape mirrors, tape their lights and speedometers and license plate edges, etc. Intermediate and Advanced have to replace their coolant with water but Novices don't.

8:30am - Riders meeting, required for all three groups. The guy in charge of the track day, Monty, gives a speech about the rules, how to enter and exit the track, things you should know about this particular track, what the various flags mean, what to do if you crash, don't be a jerk, the evils of "straight line bombing and corner camping", the importance of staying hydrated, the various available services, lunch, etc.

9:00am - Advanced and Intermediates dismissed from the meeting. Intermediate riders get the first 20 minute session. Novice riders stay for further instruction. Instructors are drawn from the Advanced group. The Novice riders are divided into groups of four to six, and assigned to individual instructors. They try to sort them according to who is likely to be fastest. The fastest riders go to Group 1, and they work down from there, with the slowest in the last group. The Novices are told that the first thing to do, is to examine the entire track. You do this by mentally dividing the track into three lanes, and riding around the track, at a moderate pace, three times, once in each lane. Each group follows their instructor. After the three trips around, the instructor will lead you and show you the racing line. You're supposed to choose things along the track to mark where you want to turn in for each curve, and memorize them. All passing is done as groups, based on the hand signals from instructors. Stay with your group, don't pass within your group.

9:40am - Novice riders get their first track session.

From then on, every hour there is twenty minutes of instruction and twenty minutes of riding. Here's what they cover:

- At 60mph, you're traveling 88 feet per second. Can you make a plan and execute it in a second? No. If it's within 88 feet of you it's already happened. Looking at this stuff just feeds your brain bad information. Focus your attention farther down the track, where you can still do something about it. This slows things down and makes it so your brain can keep up.

- Each turn is divided into entry, apex, and exit. Set the proper entry speed, pick the proper apex, and power on through the turn.

- Staying in the sweet spot of the suspension, keeping the bike's weight properly balanced front to rear.

- How the bike turns, the rear wheel is key. Countersteering, leaning, throttle steering, etc.

- If you don't use the throttle properly and pick the correct apex you'll run wide.

- Body postioning demo. There's a bike on stands and each student sits on it. Put your toes on the outside edge of the pegs. Keep your forearms parallel to the ground, put your chin over your right forearm, rotate your hips around the gas tank and point your right knee out, while resting left knee and elbow against the tank. Take your weight off your hands. Now switch sides, and once again no weight on the hands.

On Saturdays they're very formal and do this all in great detail. On Sundays they rush through the lessons more quickly and let things slide a bit, probably because the majority of the students are there for both days and it's just a review for them. Still, there are always a few Sunday-only students. My advice to anyone going for the first time, would be to get a Saturday session, because they're more thorough on Saturday. But if you've done it before and wish they'd stop lecturing so much, Sunday's the best.

The track I went to, Gingerman, has some unusual rules. There are two churches on neighboring properties and the track has to observe quiet time from 10am to noon on Sundays. So they run until 6pm each day, to give back those two hours. (I was also pleased to hear Monty criticize the guys with straight pipes. He said that many tracks are starting to enforce decibel limits because this excessive noise causes tracks to be shut down. IMHO too many people who run loud pipes do it solely to show off, and these people need to realize that their peers are not impressed, so it's good that Monty is speaking up on this issue.)

Other unusual things - There is a group that is trying to turn this Gingerman STT weekend into a big Ducati festival, and for this purpose they had a trackside dinner, a band, and a movie scheduled for Saturday night. This was sponsored by Red Bull, so there were scantily clad pretty girls wandering around giving away free cans of Red Bull on Saturday. There were also demo rides on Ducatis and Triumphs, which I did not take advantage of since I was too busy with the classroom sessions and the track sessions.

Unfortunately the weather did not cooperate. It started raining at around 3pm Saturday, and rained most of the rest of the weekend. The movie had to be canceled because of the rain. By the time I was ready to set up my tent, the whole grassy area where I might have put it was awash, so I decided to sleep in my truck instead. I woke up a number of times during the night and it was always raining. During the day Saturday, I'd been good about staying hydrated, and therefore I had to get up in the night to pee, three times. Each time, it was raining harder. By the third time, it was raining so hard, and it was so dark, that I decided not to walk up to the bathroom. I just peed on the ground near my truck, and got back in. I got soaked to the skin in the thirty seconds it took me to do this. Yuck!

On Saturday afternoon, I was a lot less distressed by the rain than a lot of the other Novices. So I came closer to holding my own, than I had all day.

On Sunday morning, about half the Novice students did not even start the day. And with the rain, lots of them quit as the day wore on, and a few more crashed out. By the last session, there were only two of us left, me and Cheryl. The one remaining instructor, Travis, basically turned us loose. I passed Cheryl! And I opened up a half a lap on her by the session's end. But before you get too impressed, please realize that my VFR750 is just plain faster than her EX500. By a lot. I could run away from her in the straights, but I suspect we were pretty evenly matched in the corners. So I'm not going to take a lot of credit for mad riding skillz just because I was able to get away from her.

The thing that was cool, was that I finally managed to hang off. This has been my bete noir at past track days. Of course it didn't make me any faster, in fact it was basically useless, since no one was getting knees down in the rain. Also I think I'll need a lot more practice at it before it will be smooth enough to do anything useful with it. But just being able to do it at all is a huge change.

The thing that was bad, is that I was repeatedly singled out and lectured for my failure to follow other riders closely enough. There are reasons I reflexively refrain from following too close, and on the street these reasons are highly valid. Unfortunately, on the track, this is not a useful habit. I fought it and fought it, but it was an uphill battle, and I think the instructors thought I was arguing with them when I tried to explain why it is so hard for me. Maybe I should find a trustworthy riding buddy or two, and get them to work on this with me on the street, let me follow them closely so I can get past this fear? OTOH, this is just a bad idea on the street, for many reasons. I will have to think about this some more.

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Guest nominal_squid

Posted

I'm green with envy...haven't seen a track on my VFR at all, and the last time I did a track day was in 2002! Sounds like you had a great time!

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  • Member Contributer

Great write up E, its awesome that you're getting out there, learning and having fun, thats what its all about. Lean angle and hanging off in corners comes with confidence and practice so the more you practice this,(on the track) the more confident you'll get. I think the hardest part for me was trusting my bike which really translates into trusting my tires, once I understood that they really would do more than I could possibly imagine lean angles and scaping knees become greater and common place. I do not practice this on a street but having said that it has certainally helped my street riding skills and ability to navigate corners with way less of a pucker factor than before, I'm confident I can navigate corners now if i'm in a little hotter than I really wanna be by my learnings on the track. Great write up on your track day experiences and what to expect, very imformative and what I believe to be a must do for any and every sport bike rider, afterall, why do we ride these things over cruisers, speed, excitement and the ability to rail through corners...........it just doesn't get any better.

Now about that peeing thing outside your truck..................................................................... :P

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...I do not practice this on a street but having said that it has certainally helped my street riding skills and ability to navigate corners with way less of a pucker factor than before, I'm confident I can navigate corners now if i'm in a little hotter than I really wanna be by my learnings on the track. Great write up on your track day experiences and what to expect, very imformative and what I believe to be a must do for any and every sport bike rider, afterall, why do we ride these things over cruisers, speed, excitement and the ability to rail through corners...........it just doesn't get any better.

This is exactly why I want to do this. Well, that, and because it's fun.

I'm probably more cautious on the street than most. But that doesn't mean I don't want to develop these skills. As a latecomer to motorcycling, and a person who has always been fairly slow to pick up anything that requires physical coordination or grace, it's really good to go to these track days and specifically work on this stuff.

Now about that peeing thing outside your truck..................................................................... :P

Next time I go, I intend to set up camp a whole lot closer to the bathrooms! :rolleyes:

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Guest Dalewman

Posted

I went on my first track day Sept 30 @ Kershaw, SC with Sportbike Track Time. I took my Ninja250 because I didn't get my VFR until this week. What a great time! I got smoked on the straights, but nobody in the Novice group could go faster in the corners. I'll be going again, on the VFR next time.

For anyone on the fence about a track day, do it! I've been riding for over 15 years and those were the most fun 90 miles I've ever ridden. I know I'm a safer street rider because of what I learned on the track.

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Wow! Great!! You are like SO doing the right thing. Don't worry for a millisecond that you are slow. The speed will come up along with the confidence as it needs to. It is so much better to have said to yourself that you could have taken a turn faster than to be saying oops, I wish I had taken it a little slower. Go slow and you build skills, take it fast and you scare yourself...then you really don't make progress. I don't know how much you have read, but the combination of keith Code's Twist of the Wrist I and II give great self visualizations and help you combat bad reactions we all tend to go to reflexively. Follow his works with a good read of Nick Ienatsch's Sport Riding Techniques and you will have the in your head knowledge of all you really need to know. Then the rest is gleaned from practice on the track as you are doing. Get the best feedback from trustworthy others to critique your form. Try to get videoed and look at it with an instructor, then sleep on it and do it again. Hitting a second track day right after looking at the video is absoutely the best.

You are looking good on the photos.

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Great write up! For those that have not been on the track, it's nice to hear about what happens, so that if I ever do make it, I'll have an idea of what to expect. Keep working on those corners! It gets better and better...

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Nice write up Elizilla. :thumbsup:

STT seems to do a good job especially with the Novice group even though I have never been in the novice class, I have many friends who have. My first track weekend with them was last Nov. at Jennings GP in FL and it was a blast. I have many, many quick paced street miles so I chose to start in the Int. group, but was bumped up to the Advanced group before lunch. :blink:

I was honored and scared at the same time, but it worked out. :thumbsup:

As far as dragging a knee I wouldn't really worry about it, I just finished my 17th track day since Nov. and I'm in the top 20% of the fastest riders in the A group and just really got my knee down for the first time at the 15th track day. :unsure:

It's addictive and great fun, no wonder I'm always broke! :rolleyes:

:wheel:

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Great write up. My VFR is loaded in the trailer right now. My first track day is sunday at Jennings GP. Should be fun!

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