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Lightweight bikes on the track


meadeam
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  • 4 months later...
On 11/23/2019 at 11:32 PM, redkow97 said:

Small bikes are awesome to race, and miserable at trackdays. 

/$.02

This! I started racing on an SV and loved it, learned a lot about carrying speed and race craft. But at track days every goon on a 600+ will fly by on the straights and park you in the corners. And then riding them in advanced gets dicey with the speed differences imo. 

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This is one reason racing is arguably safer.  I remember being out for practice on my F2 with a guy on a Honda Hawk who was just murdering me on the brakes. 

Once i had a good brake marker for my races, i backed off and just stayed behind him on the straights. 

I also think racing lends itself to being near people of similar pace and ability. Until you’re getting lapped, the fast guys are way ahead of you. 

In combined expert/novice CSS grids with 2-wave starts, i would literally get lapped by the top 2 experts in their final turn of the race and take the checkers right behind them.  That happened like 5 times in 2 race weekends. I felt like i could have gotten my full race distance if it hadn’t been a 2 wave start. 

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44 minutes ago, redkow97 said:

This is one reason racing is arguably safer.  I remember being out for practice on my F2 with a guy on a Honda Hawk who was just murdering me on the brakes. 

Arguably. Getting a race license isn't all that difficult. And I know someone who is still an average novice that snuck in and got a race license. That person grids up on the same grid as experts and imo that's dangerous as fuck. That's why some orgs wont even let you take their race licensing course without being at least in intermediate. 

Edited by TimTheAzn
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On 4/17/2020 at 10:51 PM, owndjoo said:

This! I started racing on an SV and loved it, learned a lot about carrying speed and race craft. But at track days every goon on a 600+ will fly by on the straights and park you in the corners. And then riding them in advanced gets dicey with the speed differences imo. 

This is my frustration lol. Hard to ride with friends with bigger bikes. I can keep up in the corners for the most part, as soon as any bit of straight comes into play I'll get gapped and over a session of that happening I'm not riding with friends anymore lol.

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1 hour ago, TimTheAzn said:

This is my frustration lol. Hard to ride with friends with bigger bikes. I can keep up in the corners for the most part, as soon as any bit of straight comes into play I'll get gapped and over a session of that happening I'm not riding with friends anymore lol.

Last year I took the Ninja 400 on a 3 day WV trip.  It was super fun pacing @Pauly on the Hyper Duc. 

On tight technical roads I was absolutely having a blast riding that 400 at it's limits.  But if he gapped me, I really couldn't reel him back in. 

 

 

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1 hour ago, Tpoppa said:

Last year I took the Ninja 400 on a 3 day WV trip.  It was super fun pacing @Pauly on the Hyper Duc. 

On tight technical roads I was absolutely having a blast riding that 400 at it's limits.  But if he gapped me, I really couldn't reel him back in. 

Tighter stuff levels the playing field. It's about the rider at that point, not so much the bike. 

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On 4/22/2020 at 10:38 AM, TimTheAzn said:

Arguably. Getting a race license isn't all that difficult. And I know someone who is still an average novice that snuck in and got a race license. That person grids up on the same grid as experts and imo that's dangerous as fuck. That's why some orgs wont even let you take their race licensing course without being at least in intermediate. 

True, I did the WERA race school On my street bike having never been on a track. Got a race SV and showed up tonWERa race and podiumed lol. Won 3 Nationals 2 races later and swept the regional titles. Track days definitely aren’t needed to get into racing. Biggest thing is knowing track etiquette, flags, rules, etc. 

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On 4/26/2020 at 7:17 PM, owndjoo said:

Track days definitely aren’t needed to get into racing. Biggest thing is knowing track etiquette, flags, rules, etc. 

Idk how an individual is supposed to go from street riding to being ok when an expert running 30 seconds faster than you stuffs you up the inside, or comes around the outside and chops your nose off for example. You may be a freak example. Or you got lucky.

You need to build up to suppressing those survival reactions and being comfortable with going 85mph with your knee on the ground and someone 6 inches from your belly pan at the same time. Flags and rules are the easy part at that point.

I 100% would not want someone coming off the street, with the only track experience they have is the mock race, to be in the same race as me, or any other seasoned track rider/racer.

Edited by TimTheAzn
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3 hours ago, TimTheAzn said:

Idk how an individual is supposed to go from street riding to being ok when an expert running 30 seconds faster than you stuffs you up the inside, or comes around the outside and chops your nose off for example. You may be a freak example. Or you got lucky.

You need to build up to suppressing those survival reactions and being comfortable with going 85mph with your knee on the ground and someone 6 inches from your belly pan at the same time. Flags and rules are the easy part at that point.

I 100% would not want someone coming off the street, with the only track experience they have is the mock race, to be in the same race as me, or any other seasoned track rider/racer.

years of racing motocross beforehand would have probably had a benefit with all of that. Going to lightweight helps as well, going straight into 600s is asking for trouble there. Had to relearn on the in-line . I definitely would say I’m a bit of an outlier for sure, as anyone around long enough here knows lol. 

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On 4/22/2020 at 10:40 AM, TimTheAzn said:

This is my frustration lol. Hard to ride with friends with bigger bikes. I can keep up in the corners for the most part, as soon as any bit of straight comes into play I'll get gapped and over a session of that happening I'm not riding with friends anymore lol.

Sounds like you need to buy a 600.....i got one for sale 😀

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