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A while back when I was an overly-defensive nesr noob, I made the statement that roadracing was the easier form of riding when compared to riding dirtbikes in the woods... . I can now honestly take that statement back and say that this sport is truly humbling me, and can be utterly confusing at times. I don't know how many times I've put in some laps and done things that I thought would lower my lap times for sure, only to see later that it had no effect, or even the opposite effect. This weekend opened my eyes to some of my false ideas about how to lower my lap times, and made clear to me that there is so much to learn and put into practice...
I did 3 races on Sat. and both practice sessions in the morn. The first practice I went out and got comfortable riding again, and when I came in I decided I wanted to work on corner exits. I have been reading great articles from both the Penguin newsletter, and Roadracing world's new Ken Hill series. Both have spoke about corner exits so I wanted to put that knowledge into practice. I identified a couple turns that would be labeled "exit, or drive focused turns", namely 2, 4, 10, and 12. I realized from past experience that I wasn't getting good drives out of these turns and thought that I could shave off a some time if I learned how to do this properly. So I picked the 2 most obvious turns (2+12) and started working. I basically focused on slowing down enough mid-corner to hit the apex right and get pointed in the right direction for a good drive. It actually worked well, and I recall numerous times getting much better drives onto both straights, so that I was definitely hitting a higher rpm toward the end of the straight than I used to. I started trying to apply this every lap, but I never got to see practice lap times due to the printer not working, so I had no idea if it was helping or not, but common sense told me that it was faster to get good drives...
The next thing I focused on during all my race laps, was carrying more speed. Basically, I had the idea that the fast guys are just going faster by like 5 or 10 mph everywhere, so I tried to do that too. One area that I thought was going to make a big difference in my lap times was the entrance to 9. I used to get on the brakes there, but this weekend I just zoomed in there and threw the bike on it's side. I figured that had to drop my lap times because it was an entire section of the track that I wasn't using brakes where I used to... how could it not make me faster! I generally felt like I was ripping faster through every section of the track... I was getting into 1 good, getting into 3 better, hauling ass through 10, etc... . Well, it didn't do much for my times. I was maybe 2 seconds faster than last weekend, but still 2 seconds slower than last season. How the hell could I be slower than last season where I was on the brakes everywhere and pussy-footing through turns??? I've come to realize that raw speed isn't the answer at all, and as much as I don't want to believe it, going slow to go fast is making more and more sense to me. I think what is happening is that carrying more speed everywhere, just has me missing my apexes, and basically blowing the corners when compared to last season. When I was a novice, I paid careful attention to hitting the apex of each turn. I wasn't hauling ass, but just trying to consistently hit the apexes. Well, its seems that doing that was more effective than anything I'm trying now... I'll have to basically start over, and focus on my lines, not speed. Then when I can hit those marks automatically, I'll start increasing the speed. Roadracing is tough no doubt... especially when practice time is limited for me, but my determination to make this work and to get faster will eventually win out. It's just going to take some time.
So my races were Am. GTU, HWSS, and MWGP. Weather was perfect, and I had a lot of fun doing tons of laps with practice and these races combined, so it was a great day. I took 8th in GTU, 13th in HWSS (but I beat Jim so that's all that matters), and 12th in MWGP. The only interesting thing to note out of all the races was during the dash. I got passed toward the end of the race by someone who wasn't going much faster than me. I wanted to get back by him and knew I could so I put my head down and started gaining on him. I was slowly reeling him in and I would have got him but then the bizarre happened, and on our (am.) last lap, Eric Wood came through to take the checkered flag for the experts... he was in between me and the guy I was chasing when he crossed the finish line, and we're all going down the front straight when he lets off the gas to celebrate and do his cool down lap... by time I got close to him we were going into 1/1a and I had to get around him but I just felt awkward. It totally killed any chance of me catching my guy because he was long gone by time I went around Eric in T2, but yeah that was kind of bizarre being held up by an expert... usually it's the other way around!