Kris
02-05-2007, 17:21
Well, today I went to sunny Donington to try out their Ron Haslam race school.
Just a little report back to say what a great day I had. I'm amazed by how much more confidence it has given me on my own road bike just by having as little as 45 minutes out on track.
I picked up my buddy Tris this morning at 6am (too early, i'll know for next time!) and drove the 2 hours down to donington. Once at donington we managed to find out way to the paddock quite and signing in. We were a little early and so had to hang about a bit before we could sign in for our day. Took the opportunity to pay for our photos (20 quid) whilst we were hanging about , grabbed a quick coffee and got geared up.
After signing in we had the briefing, Nothing here was too complex and it pretty much seemed like they were trying to calm everyone down and keep everything nice and light hearted. After the 25 minute or so briefing it was outside to meet our instructor. We had a little chat about what we wanted to get out of the day. For me it was pretty much confidence in knowing how far i can bank a bike over, and to try and get my knee down (cheesy i know but i dont care!!)
We headed out for th efirst session, it was SLOW, im talking so slow we never got out of second gear all the way round the track. Some may consider that bad, however I saw the bright side in that it allowed me to have a good look at the course and work out were the breaking and apex cones were without ever worrying if I was in the wrong gear (2nd seems pretty good everywhere really)
first session was over quickly and then it was back in to talk about body postition on the bike when cornering. It was useful, nothing ground breaking but it was nice to hear from someone that your technique of moving round the bike actually isnt that bad.
Straight after this session our bike came back in the pits (another group uses them whilst your having your chats.)
Tyres were nice and warm now so off we went pretty much straight away.
used 2nd again into goddards and through craner and the old hairpin. Speed picked up one notch and we managed to need 3rd on the way through starkeys. Coming upto the melbourne hairpin , and down my knee went, wasnt even thinking about it as was concentrating so much on looking all the way through theh hairpin. Was a great feeling , however it also meant that pretty much every right hander i came to after that saw a little bit of scrapeage, not because i needed to, but because i could :D
came in at the end of the session being all happy with my little self, the instructor behind us had a quick word with our instructor and mentioned that I looked a little ragged on pretty much the whole session. I agreed, hey I was loving getting my knee down and caning someone elses bike about so didnt care i was missing the odd apex :beach:
last session, me and tris got split up, my instructor wanted to spend some more time with him to work on his body positioning and he felt that I was getting held up. I wasnt bothered, i'd have stayed with Tris for the last session, but seens as I was gonna be given one on one tuition for the last session then i thought that was great :)
So off we popped, third session and the speeds are already much faster than they were on the other 2 previous sessions (instructor now on a blade, as apposed to the horned clad one i had before, not that it mattered, these guys could beat me on a 125 if they wanted to!)
Anywho, was really concentrating on this last session, following the instructors lines and trying to work on being smooth from one corner to the next. 1 thing i noticed that as soon as we finished 1 corned he would have his body position setup for the next one even though it was a couple of hundred yards away. Gave that a shot and liked it, meant there was less to do when you were piling on the brakes coming in to the corners.
2nd lap, managed to completely fluff up the foggy esses. Paying too much attention to back of the instructor bike and missed the breaking point, managed to get the speed down but missed the gear change and that screwed me up completely. Anyways forgot about it, and got back on with it. Last session was over far too quickly, wanted another 10 laps to put into practice what we had learnt through the day.
Final debrief and we got our scores , then came home to practice some more roundabout surfing :D
great day, a little over priced for the amount of track time you get, but for a first track day experience I was more than happy with it.
Next is California Superbike School I think .. :D
Just a little report back to say what a great day I had. I'm amazed by how much more confidence it has given me on my own road bike just by having as little as 45 minutes out on track.
I picked up my buddy Tris this morning at 6am (too early, i'll know for next time!) and drove the 2 hours down to donington. Once at donington we managed to find out way to the paddock quite and signing in. We were a little early and so had to hang about a bit before we could sign in for our day. Took the opportunity to pay for our photos (20 quid) whilst we were hanging about , grabbed a quick coffee and got geared up.
After signing in we had the briefing, Nothing here was too complex and it pretty much seemed like they were trying to calm everyone down and keep everything nice and light hearted. After the 25 minute or so briefing it was outside to meet our instructor. We had a little chat about what we wanted to get out of the day. For me it was pretty much confidence in knowing how far i can bank a bike over, and to try and get my knee down (cheesy i know but i dont care!!)
We headed out for th efirst session, it was SLOW, im talking so slow we never got out of second gear all the way round the track. Some may consider that bad, however I saw the bright side in that it allowed me to have a good look at the course and work out were the breaking and apex cones were without ever worrying if I was in the wrong gear (2nd seems pretty good everywhere really)
first session was over quickly and then it was back in to talk about body postition on the bike when cornering. It was useful, nothing ground breaking but it was nice to hear from someone that your technique of moving round the bike actually isnt that bad.
Straight after this session our bike came back in the pits (another group uses them whilst your having your chats.)
Tyres were nice and warm now so off we went pretty much straight away.
used 2nd again into goddards and through craner and the old hairpin. Speed picked up one notch and we managed to need 3rd on the way through starkeys. Coming upto the melbourne hairpin , and down my knee went, wasnt even thinking about it as was concentrating so much on looking all the way through theh hairpin. Was a great feeling , however it also meant that pretty much every right hander i came to after that saw a little bit of scrapeage, not because i needed to, but because i could :D
came in at the end of the session being all happy with my little self, the instructor behind us had a quick word with our instructor and mentioned that I looked a little ragged on pretty much the whole session. I agreed, hey I was loving getting my knee down and caning someone elses bike about so didnt care i was missing the odd apex :beach:
last session, me and tris got split up, my instructor wanted to spend some more time with him to work on his body positioning and he felt that I was getting held up. I wasnt bothered, i'd have stayed with Tris for the last session, but seens as I was gonna be given one on one tuition for the last session then i thought that was great :)
So off we popped, third session and the speeds are already much faster than they were on the other 2 previous sessions (instructor now on a blade, as apposed to the horned clad one i had before, not that it mattered, these guys could beat me on a 125 if they wanted to!)
Anywho, was really concentrating on this last session, following the instructors lines and trying to work on being smooth from one corner to the next. 1 thing i noticed that as soon as we finished 1 corned he would have his body position setup for the next one even though it was a couple of hundred yards away. Gave that a shot and liked it, meant there was less to do when you were piling on the brakes coming in to the corners.
2nd lap, managed to completely fluff up the foggy esses. Paying too much attention to back of the instructor bike and missed the breaking point, managed to get the speed down but missed the gear change and that screwed me up completely. Anyways forgot about it, and got back on with it. Last session was over far too quickly, wanted another 10 laps to put into practice what we had learnt through the day.
Final debrief and we got our scores , then came home to practice some more roundabout surfing :D
great day, a little over priced for the amount of track time you get, but for a first track day experience I was more than happy with it.
Next is California Superbike School I think .. :D