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I had the pleasure of attending an open track day at Firebird East with AZ Track Time.  This was a unique situation because it was considered a ‘race practice day’.  That meant that only those with a CCS license could attend.  But, since our very own GothicbeaST is in that series, he made the call and got us in.  The cool thing is that there were a total of nineteen (!) people that were there for the day and we could enter and exit the track at our liesure.

A couple months ago I went to Firebird West which was a technical track at 1.1 miles with eleven turns.  The SV was rather well-suited for that situation.  Firebird East, even though its claimed to be 1.25 miles, is a faster flowing track with only one slower second gear turn.  Check ‘em out:

Anyway, I found there to be three hard braking points at the approaches to turns two, four, and one.  This is where the SV was a little lacking.  There is always room for rider improvement, especially in my case with turn four as I struggled with it all day, but the extra HP for a better drive and faster top speed was missed a little.

For this and future track days, I picked up a lap timer to provide a measureable of improvement, etc.  After yesterday, I almost wish I hadn’t.  My buddy I pitted with, also had this timer and we pretty much rode together all day.  Session #1 was 1:10’s, session #2, was 1:06’s, and session #3 dipped into the 1:04’s according to his timer.  Mine simply was not working and it was pissing me off. 

I’ve found that I need a clear head to ride ’sportingly’ (nice word) whether its through the mountains or on a track.  Things went south after I started focusing on the lap timer versus the laps themselves.  Next session was (for me) 1:08’s, then the next two were 1:07’s.  My wrists were absolutely killing me and GB noticed that the clip-ons were cranked inward pretty far and suggested that I move them outward.  GREAT advice.  I relieved the pressure some during hard braking some, but I think it was too late.  I was good for only 8-10 laps at a time then had to come in.  As of this moment, I can’t really make a fist without a reasonable amount of pain.  There is no doubt that I have not bee riding and that I need to start getting back my motorcycle muscles, but I am hoping that the next time will be improved comfort due to the clip-on change…and me learning to squeeze the tank with my thighs when hard braking.

We got the lap timer working correctly, and things clicked again…well almost.  Through some bs’ing and further advice , I changed up a couple of things and it made a huge difference.  The track flowed better on the back side and I was braking later into the turns on the front.

GB said the day before “every turn can be taken faster than you think”.  He was right, especially on the approach to turn two.  I was thinking that I needed to be in second gear which had me braking way too early.  On the last two sessions, when I had my mojo back, I chose cones much further ahead and took the turn in third gear and it made a huge difference in speed and flow.

I still struggled with turn four, but got it more figured out the last session or two.  I had the good fortune of following an expert into the turn to get his line through the whole thing.  Seeing that whole turn in action, and feeling it at speed made a difference.  I still suck in that area, but things are better.

All in all it was a good day.  It was on a Friday, and I could have been working!  A couple of funny quote I heard that I thought were worth sharing:

• “Don’t crash, don’t die, and don’t make me look like a cunt!”  - from Jack the British owner/operator of the track day organization.
• “If there was no crashing, we would never upgrade our bikes” - from Joe the expert guy parked next to us