Some track day prep questions

spooky said:

Fixed under warranty.

I don’t think they have given it any heat cycles to make sure it’s okay though. That would’ve been quite hard to do considering they let the battery completely die. I picked it up, got to the track and found out…

Dealers are utterly useless. 

Click to expand...

did they tell you what they saw inside when they opened it ?

hows valve clearances ?

panibadboy said:

did they tell you what they saw inside when they opened it ?

hows valve clearances ?

Click to expand...

They gave me a list of the measurements. I’ll post it when I’m home. All of them were within tolerance, apparently.

On the battery, you got data loggers on there right? That .... will kill a Li in 48 hours in my experience if not disconnected.

Kev242 said:

On the battery, you got data loggers on there right? That .... will kill a Li in 48 hours in my experience if not disconnected.

Click to expand...

Yeah, I thought about that after it happened…

It happened with my SP2 as well. Clearly haven’t learned a thing.

I should have unplugged the logger, although I did think they would have run the bike to check if it was ok…

Perfect weather and new battery fitted last night.

I went out for the first session and I usually just take it easy and see how the track is and avoid the white paint and kerbs, although you need to go over a couple here for the right lines.

Interesting to note that what felt like a slow warmup was only two seconds slower than my best time so far.

I moved the bars forward a little bit before coming and it feels better.

Definitely feeling more comfortable with the bars further forward and I’ve already improved my best time.

Still concentrating only on vision and body position.

hows new seal ? any oil out yet ?

panibadboy said:

hows new seal ? any oil out yet ?

Click to expand...

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?

Click to expand...

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.

Click to expand...

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 …

Click to expand...

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 !

Click to expand...

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...