Some track day prep questions

panibadboy said:

hows new seal ? any oil out yet ?

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Seems ok. Small bit of smoke from that area when I first started it, but that disappeared and it seems to be fine.

I seem to have a habit of setting a new best time in the first few sessions and then gradually getting slower instead of building on the progress…

Quite frustrating.

How much better?

andyb said:

How much better?

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A little, but the issue isn’t how much the initial improvement was – it’s not building on that and continuing to improve.

My take it easy warm up first session on Friday was several seconds quicker than I’m doing it at the moment.

At 2.30 you should / could be improving by five seconds a day…

I suspect you need to relax more …

spooky said:

A little, but the issue isn’t how much the initial improvement was – it’s not building on that and continuing to improve.

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So much of that sums up what’s wrong with our society these days….‍
It’s just the taking part that matters.. be part of the community ….

Get someone to follow you and video it…

andyb said:

At 2.30 you should / could be improving by five seconds a day…

I suspect you need to relax more …

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I’m at Most. 1:58s and 1:59s in the second session on the first day, without actually trying (that’s probably the point) and now I’m slower than my first session on the first day.

I suspect you are right. Instead of working on stuff, I’ll just go out, keep my vision up and have some fun.

Last event of the year next weekend at Brno and the forecast is solid rain all three days.

Stop worrying about the times and trying to better them. It’ll subconsciously cause you to ride tight. You ride faster in the early sessions because you’re not thinking of the times and just riding.

Don’t even ride with “vision” in mind. Just ride on improving feeling and confidence.

And dont forget to hit FKK in evening to relax !

panibadboy said:

And dont forget to hit FKK in evening to relax !

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Oh my god…

As an added bonus, because the battery was dead the data logger lost it's settings as it was without power, so I've no data from the weekend.

If I hadn't been going from the dealer to the track and instead had time to get the bike home then I would have noticed there was no power and been able to do something about it.

Annoying. More lessons learned...

As far as the track weekend goes, it's clear that I was trying too hard and not relaxing and letting things happen. Working on things at 80% and then having fun and letting it come together is what I was told to do and what I didn't do, although I'm still riding well within a big margin of safety (probably for too cautious).

I've seen the benefits of this approach before, with best laps coming in final sessions when I stopped working on technique and just went out to enjoy the final session or two. Obviously this weekend the best laps were the first session taking it easy to warm up and see how the track is and the second session just having some fun and getting up to speed before working on technique.

Oh well, it wasn't what I hoped for but still an improvement. If I'm consistently under two minutes without trying then there's a lot more to come if I let it happen instead of getting in my own way. I think body position must be improved though as I still had a couple of mm of the rear tyre left despite going faster, whereas I was previously using all of it with significantly slower laps. The front tyre now gets a lot hotter than before, so I guess I'm getting more confident with the brakes.

Hopefully the weather forecast for this weekend significantly improves for Brno...

I've started watching my video from the event. The first (and best) 1:58 was in the second session. In the third session I was consistently doing 1:58 and 1:59s with occasional traffic - not enough to worry about but consistent times and starting to carry more speed in the corners. In the afternoon they moved me down a group and it was filled with loads of people going far slower but also mixed with some people going much faster. I didn't have one clear lap in the afternoon and there were quite a lot of dodgy moves made and some significant traffic. The slower people were only there on that first day.

Following someone a little bit faster than myself can be useful as I can see they are not doing anything that I can't do. Not so easy at this event though, as the majority of the riders were in the 1:40s, quite a few in the 1:30s and a few in the 1:50s.

On the slow first-gear hairpin I had someone go around the outside with his elbow down, which was off-putting. There were some very significant speed differences in each group (in my group there were some guys doing low 1:40s).

I think I was being a bit hard on myself. There were actually a number of corners that I was taking quite a bit faster and I think I would probably have improved further without the group change on the first day. The second day only had two sessions (races from mid-morning for the rest of the day) and the third day had an oil spill that was hard to avoid and I wasn't taking any chances, so I wasn't going to get improved times on that day (the fastest times for the people racing were about 10 seconds slower). So I'm not sure I really had much chance to improve times after the morning session on the first day but, thanks to the video, I can see some areas where I was making improvements even when the lap times were not going to reflect this.

I also noticed that the fuel tank got bloody hot... Hot enough that you wouldn't want to rest your hand on it for long. Not sure if that's normal but I hadn't noticed it being that hot before.

Not sure how I'm going to cope with probably eight months without track days...

spooky said:

Not sure how I'm going to cope with probably eight months without track days...

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Rent a proper van (not like your failure last time), drive your bike to Rehm Racing or Bike Promotions (check both calendars) in Germany, leave it there and enjoy a myriad of Spanish and Portuguese events over the course of fall/winter/spring days.

panibadboy said:

Rent a proper van (not like your failure last time), drive your bike to Rehm Racing or Bike Promotions (check both calendars) in Germany, leave it there and enjoy a myriad of Spanish and Portuguese events over the course of fall/winter/spring days.

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ONE time! One... time... and it wasn't my failure!!!

The provider I found after that fiasco has been excellent. Vans are always perfect, they deliver and collect the vans, even on Sundays. Perfect.

Moving on... that's not the worst suggestion you've ever made. Do they transport the bike to the events or do you need to collect it from them for each event you attend?

spooky said:

Do they transport the bike to the events

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they handle transport + you can leave all your extra .... with them too. prices are reasonable for both.
sometimes they have jerry cans, but you can drop yours with your .....

they also offer basic mechanic, but be prepared to buy oil/filters/pads and change it yourself at the event.

they have tires and a tire guy.

you basically take a flight thursday night, arrive, rent a car, drive to the track to set stuff up, have beers at the hotel, go to sleep.
3 days at the track next morning.

panibadboy said:

they handle transport + you can leave all your extra .... with them too. prices are reasonable for both.
sometimes they have jerry cans, but you can drop yours with your .....

they also offer basic mechanic, but be prepared to buy oil/filters/pads and change it yourself at the event.

they have tires and a tire guy.

you basically take a flight thursday night, arrive, rent a car, drive to the track to set stuff up, have beers at the hotel, go to sleep.
3 days at the track next morning.

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I'll have to look into this.

I’ve only done one Rehm day so far (Misano). It was superb and I certainly be doing more, highly recommend..

I’m going to contact them. It looks like a great idea.

I was checking the bike over and noticed that the rear tire had uneven wear along the edge. It was to the edge, then slightly away, then back to the edge… I’m guessing this might be to do with rebound and compression? I have not seen this before. I also wonder about preload and I know that a lot of people of my weight, which varies at the moment between 87kg and 89 kg without riding gear, use different springs at the front and rear. The front was fine.

Have you never set you sag? Ride height ? Damping? .. feel we have been here before..