hokay, I'm up.
I pretty much got NO SLEEP last night, between obsessing about every single detail on the bike and my general predisposition towards not sleeping, I think I got about a full hour of sleep. Maybe less.
Today was my first real trackday at TWS on my new 996.
I rolled outta bed at 4 and left to pick up the bike at Lu's and load it into my friends trailer. I was pretty nervous as I was riding a new bike on a strange track with actual traffic, not like my previous experiences.
I took Chill's advice and cornerworked in the morning so I could have the evening sessions to ride in. The weather could not have been more perfect for it, clear, sunny, low of 60 (first session) and high of 85.
Cornerworking was pretty tedious but I got to see some nice bikes going by. I started riding around 1. My friend gave me a lap timer for shits and giggles. Okay on to the good stuff.
Session 1:
I very nervous and took it pretty gingerly, at first I was going so slow that pretty much everyone was passing me, that got me really frustrated. Everyone had had the morning sessions to get to know the track and sort out their bikes, I had not.
For some reason, my bike felt really squirrelly and I just didn't have any confidence in it, or myself. I decided to make the best of it and try to learn the track as best as I could and try to figure out what lines were the best to take at a each corner. I came out of the session pretty bummed out and questioning my riding abilities.
The best time I could manage was a 2:59.3 Which is pretty bad, specially for the 996.
I discussed my woes to my friend, and he suggested to lower the tyre pressure a bit, I went down from 34r 32f to 30.5r 28.5f
Session 2:
THIS BIKE IS ON RAILS! The change in tyre pressures was amazing, I felt so much more planted on the bike and confident, it was a night and day difference. I started to get a lot more confident on the bike, hanging out a lot more and leaning the bike like never before. I concentrated on my body positioning and avoiding getting crossed up, and finally by the end of the session, I was up to pace. I even made a couple of passes (on the outside of turn 7) and I felt great by the time it ended. I analyzed my riding and the biggest problem I had was not trusting the brakes enough, meaning that I would roll off the power before the corner until I was down to a speed I felt comfortable at. Also, I was not rolling on the throttle as much as I should have, as evidenced by the couple of people who passed me by throttling out of the corners a lot faster than me.
best lap time: 2:44.3
Session 3:
I forgot to turn the timer on this session
Again the bike felt like it was on rails, and I started carrying a lot more speed through the corners, Specially on turn 1. I was braking a lot for this turn and coming down from the main straight. I got a lot more comfortable with just trusting the front and hanging off until I was not braking at all for that turn but just downshifting into 3 and and picking the right line. I glanced at the clocks and was surprised that I was taking it at 80-90 mph. (not all that fast really but fast for me). I got a bit of a shock a couple of laps into this session when on the carroussel I scraped my knee and boot. I was very happy
Towards the end of the session, I dragged my left knee (intentionally) on turn 7, right after the back strait. I made a couple of passes and only got passed by 4 (non instructors) riders. same problem with me not trusting the brakes enough to get up to a speed to use them properly.
Session 4:
This session was a mini session, only 10 mins, so I was only able to do 4 laps.
I really tried to focus on not crossing up in this session and my body positioning. I felt amazingly well on the bike, very confident and dialed things up a notch, there was some traffic but I was able to clear most of it by the second lap, and after that I just concentrated on being smooth and being properly positioned. Scraped both knees again
No boot this time
I was very surprised by when the session ended that my best lap time was a 2:31.2 I did not expect to shave a half minute of my time, even tough it is still pretty bad
I wished that I could've kept on going because I felt that I had a lot more to improve upon, but sadly, we had to leave.
I would love to go out next time with some of you more experienced guys so I can learn a lot from you.
Next trackday is in october. I'm already signed up
