0
Wednsday BoMo: Had a good day on the RS125. Day was dry so it served as a good practice for the upcoming weekend. Ran within a second from my PB which I think is pretty good for a track day.
Thursday Practice: Didn't expect a large turnout due to rain and being the end of the season. I was right, I had the track to myself in the morning, then it got crowded in the afternoon when two others showed up. It was my first time in the rain on the RS125 so I took it easy at first. I was planning to ramp up my pace as the day progressed, but the bike started to act up and sputter in the up half the power band. Seems like the culprit was water getting sucked into the carb. It might also have been wires getting wet.
Friday Penguin: Took the day off from riding, but acted as bike owner/pit crew to young Jake who was doing the Penguin school in the rain. Since my bike already had rains on, I let him use it for the day and tried to use the opportunity to further troubleshoot the sputtering when the bike gets wet.
Saturday LRRS: Still not using warmers and counting on a disciplined warm-up lap to get the tires up to temp, I got a few laps in practice one after going out a bit late waiting for the bike's engine to get up to temp. I wasn't so disciplined for second practice and spun the rear going over the transition leaving the Nascar oval exiting 3 resulting in a gentle low side. Broke a peg so I couldn't continue practice. Started using warmers from that point on. Bike still ran rough so I was way off my pace as I had to change a lot of shift points to work around the sputtering and I didn't have all the usual power available but I managed a 3rd in 125GP and a 3rd in LWGP.
Sunday LRRS: Bike still running rough for practice and race 1, GTL. Quickly left behind after the green flag for race 1 so I run by myself for a few laps until I get lapped by 4 bikes in 1-1A-2. I try to keep up with them as we charge into 3. Here's where I got a front row seat for the Stu/Mike incident. I'm not sure who was on which side, but it seems like the bike on the left tucked the front under braking and the bike slid into the guy on the inside line into 3. I trail-braked my way to the right as I attempted to simultaneously slow down and point myself away from the sliding riders and bikes and aimed for the closing gap of clear track. Managed to make it through only hitting a cone with my right foot that came flying by.
After the restart, I managed to stick with a Ducati 750 for the rest of the race. I was able to pass him a few times entering 3 or 6 but was always promptly out-powered on the exits. Finished behind the Ducati but apparently he was a lap down for some reason so took 5th out of 6.
Season results: 2nd in Light Weight GP, 3rd in 125GP, 13th in GTL and 17th in Middle Weight GP (all novice obviously).
Monday TTD: Signed up for the 3 day Tony's Track Day for some relaxing post season track time where I could relax a bit on the track and take advantage of Tony's excellent team of instructors. The RS125 was still running rough, but finally got that solved when I tried different jetting (that might have cleared out remain water in the carb) and cleaned the plug cap. I was excited to finally get the bike to run normal so I could go back to my usual shift points and pace and start working on some lines Gino had shown me earlier. It didn't take long before I felt something I had never felt on the 125: tires slipping. Could it be that the 2 1/2 year old slicks are finally telling me they are done? Despite slowing down my pace, I felt a few more slips during the following sessions. Took the wheels off at the end of the day and got some new Bridgestones from Miles.
Tuesday TTD: Took it easy that morning on the new rubber so I could get used to the round profile rather than the old worn out shape of the old tires. As I was picking up the pace midday, cresting the hill over 5 going flat out, I got a surprise as the bike suddenly nosed dived, slowed down and started making strange metallic grinding sounds. The nose diving caught me off-guard so it took me a few seconds to realize I had just grenaded the motor and it wasn't some sort of suspension failure. Pushed the 125 back to the garage and hopped on the EX250 for the rest of the day. (Pictures from that evening's autopsy are posted in another thread somewhere...)
Took a session or two to reacquaint myself with the EX250. One of my shift points on the 125 is to go down to 1 for T3. I only made that mistake once on the EX250 as I locked the rear despite smoothly letting out the clutch and going around 3 at a snails pace. (I didn't want to up-shift until past the transition bumps even at this slow pace since I still hadn't gotten the feel for the bike yet and wasn't sure how smoothly I could make the shift) I think Tyler, one of the instructors who used to race 125s, figured out what was going on when he pulled up beside me with that what-the-hell-are-you-doing look on his face and realized it was me.
Once I got back up to speed on the EX250, I had a lot of fun. The bike is slower but more relaxing to ride than the 125, which goes right along with my goals for the post race track days of just having fun and relaxing after pushing hard all season trying to drop my times for racing.
Wednesday TTD: The rain showed up as expected so the turnout was light. I can barely keep up with the fast group on the RS125, so I run the EX250 in the intermediate group. Well to give us more track time, Tony split the intermediate group and had the slower ones join the beginner group while the faster ones went with the fast group. I wanted to avoid running with the fast guys for fear of getting sucked in over my head trying to follow someone on rain tires but I was worried that the more restrictive beginner group passing rules would hinder me on such a low HP bike.
I decided to start in the slower group and see how it would go. I actually ended up have a really good time in there. My pace was definitely faster than most in the slow group so I made it my goal to make all my passes as cleanly as possible, well within the passing rules for the group and with enough room around me to minimize spooking the less experienced riders. Getting all those clean passes in was very satisfying. Goes to show that there are many ways to approach a track day and come out having gained useful experience without it involving lap times.
Despite choosing the slow group so I wouldn't ride over my head, during my last session I still managed to go into a wet turn 11 with a bit more speed than talent which resulted into a gentle low side. That convinced my that the day was over but the minimal damage didn't even tarnish the great day I had despite the rain.
Thank you! I'm not going to mention names because I'll forget some but thank you to everyone that was part of making this track season so enjoyable. All of you which I hung out with, or we helped each other or even briefly chatted for a bit between sessions were all part of making both track days and racing the great sport that it is.
It's going to be long winter waiting for the 2011 season... unless a mid-winter road trip south happens...
Reply With Quote
Originally Posted by wheelieman14
