Our first event for the club for 2016 was the BMW sponsored track day. We couldn’t have asked for a better day, for the first time in about 5 years the weather cooperated with us. The day was perfect!
The only downside I can come up with was the number of people who fell down during the day. We had 10 crashes, which is 10 too many in my book. Two of them where the same person on two different bikes. I’m thinking that he was just pushing a bit too much for his first day back out on the track. I’m really pleased that none of the crashes where students that I worked with. Goes to show that my program does work.
I spent my morning on a drift bike… not really but every time I went to the throttle the back of the bike stepped out. I did manage to get a lot of use out of that tire. Two Race days last year, two track days at Sandia, a track day at Arroyo last year, a few laps and a race day at Arroyo this year and that morning. The tire looked great, just looking at it you would think it had lots of life left, it just wasn’t hooking up. After I figured out what it was I started to play with it and making it step out on purpose in a few of the turns. I just wasn’t about to take the bike into the expert group and try to put down some really hot laps with it.
Once I put a different rear tire on at lunch I did get out for some hot laps, it felt great to get some fast laps in. I’m going to need to a lot more of those if I am going to do any racing at all this season. I’m still in teaching mode and rolling off way too soon for a few of the turns. In all it was a really great day. I hope the next track day is just as nice.