The June SMRI track day was great; but I find this year that I’m suffering from indifference when it comes to riding at Sandia. Most of the time I’d just rather not ride there, it’s that indifference that’s hurting my racing there too. It’s the main reason that I took my time getting out onto the track Sunday morning; also registration makes it tough to get my stuff ready.
My main motivation for finally getting it together to get out there was prodding from Brandon and a couple others that I’d worked with at the past track days. Brandon wanted some more help, so I pulled it together so I could get out there for the session before his, to warm up the tires and figure out where I was going. This was the first time this year that I’ve ridden the new configuration.
Now, my first couple of laps out there were interesting, trying to remember all the things I needed to work on from the YCRS school I’d just finished. Finding the apexes for the new transition turns was really difficult. Each one of those transition turns has a number of ways paths, and different places you can apex them. I wasn’t comfortable and I was wicked slow, but that only lasted 3 laps. By the time I was on the 4th lap, I was much more comfortable trailing the brakes to the slowest part of the corner. Now, I wasn’t by any means moving around the track at a record pace, but I was quick enough to not get passed except by 3 people and they’re ones that if they hadn’t passed me I’d have been shocked.
Once I was finally getting into it, I finally got around to helping out some of the track day riders. At the last track day I’d worked a great deal with Brandon and I did the same this time out too. He’s got some skill, he just doesn’t seem to trust the bike,k tires or himself. We’ve been working on body positioning and we still need to get him moving off the bike. Like most of the riders, he’s good about moving his butt, off the seat, but he keeps his head over the bike and almost over the center. Each time we head out there he gets a little faster, but I can tell when he’s getting tired. He slows down and stops moving off the bike.
In the last session, Charles headed out there on a vintage bike. He’s such a smack talker; he was talking about how he it was on this time out and he was going to school me with that bike. LOL. I followed Brandon out; we went back and forth with my leading a lap and then following him for a lap. Until, I saw Charles starting to catch up to me, then I passed Brandon, so I could run just fast enough to keep Charles behind me. After a few laps I let him get a lil’ closer but made sure that he couldn’t get too close. It was a great deal of fun to toy with him like that. He loved it, too.