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Hey guys,
So for my third track day and first this year I brought my new (4 days old to me) 09 ninja 250 (red, #27) to Canaan. I have done 2 days with fishtail and had to do one with penguin. I felt really comfortable on the little 250 compared to my 1200 and took my peg feelers off and was still scraping peg as I whizzed through corners; I am a B group track experience rider so not even comparable to anyone very good, but from what the coaches told me I have improved a lot on the things i struggled with before and have some new issues to work on. Got my BP nailed down pretty good, a coach behind me and a super fast guy said it was decent but i could pull my inside shoulder in more, a big improvement from, "your hanging waaaay too far off that thing." Locked in and light on my feet and i was flying. Got the speed up, now fix those early apexes, ok now I'm going too fast in the corners for most other people, time to set up some mid turn passes; follow em, find a weak turn for them set your line up and pin it while they miss their apex, ect. It was one hell of a fun day.
Obviously what I'm slowly getting to here is, on a successful track day you should improve on a lot of different things and maybe be getting a little faster. I pushed myself hard yesterday and had an amazing time, but am I ruining other peoples day with a little spill? I do not want people to think I am reckless and feel unsafe with me out there, but i had a pretty open field in front of me and wanted to really ride hard. Well, I did but the whole new level of speed brought back the early apexes, and of course that meas gas on bike down and I dumped it. No one was hurt, I just slid through the turn on my butt through turn 2 and there was a pretty good gap between me and the fast guy behind me, I think he saw it coming thankfully. My bike only broke off a foot peg and brake lever which i was gonna replace with rear sets anyway, and I only missed out on 1 more session.
I think that that was probably my biggest break through day in my 3 years and ~60K miles of street/TD riding, but should I return to a penguin track day session with that attitude or just go get my racing license or something? I think that my attitude wouldn't be appropriate at fishtail, but this is a a more sport oriented group than fishtail, who also does an amazing job. If I felt like I made a questionable maneuver I would go and talk to the rider in the pits and make sure it seemed OK from their perspective and everyone was super nice and said they felt like I was safe, but obviously they may not say anything to me before we go back out there together again. I was absolutely not trying to pass like, keep up with, or act like a racer but I do think I want to put the effort in to be that experienced and capable. I do not want to race competitively right now I just really love riding bikes. Thought or opinions? Would you feel safe with me out there?