I posted this on another forum, but it's the write up of my track day a couple of weeks ago.
The last time I was out on track was a race weekend, which saw me finish 2nd in the championship in a one-make series. Because of this, when I signed up to the trackday I was assigned to the red (fast) group. No pressure then.
Before the day, I set my 2009 R1 up as best I could. I removed mirrors and numberplate, put some Motul RBF 600 brake fluid in and dropped my road-going Bridgestone S22s to 30 psi front and 26 rear. I also dropped the yokes 9mm down the forks for quicker turn in and added a 2mm washer to the top of the rear shock mount.
On arriving at the track, it was clear that people are throwing WAY more cash at track days than back in 2005. I was the only person to be on such road-orientated rubber. A few were on Supercorsas, but the majority were on slicks. Also, most bikes there were either 2016+ R1s or R1Ms, S1000RRs or Ducati Panigales. I think there was just me and a couple of lower capacity bikes and a TLR1000 out there without electronic rider aids.
Getting out on track and getting into it wasn't as daunting as I might have thought. I took it easy really and learnt the lines very quickly and then concentrated on what the bike was doing and where I could go faster. The one thing that held me back on the day was my new level of self-preservation. When I was racing, it didn't really matter if I threw it down the road trying to go faster, but now I have school runs etc to do. That lasting sense of not wanting to be passed (from my racing days) irked me though and I was frustrated at my lack of mid-corner speed (primarily me), but not helped by everyone coming past me being on slicks, so I couldn't really judge my corner entry speed by theirs.
What I did find was that I didn't really push the grip limits. I didn't have any big slides, but could feel the bike moving about here and there. It feels like I wanted the bike to cut a tighter line and not push wide, but I didn't have the recent experience to push it harder to make it do that.
Ultimately, it was a great day with some very quick riders out there, but I felt a bit disappointed with myself at not pushing harder. That said, there were crashes in 5 out of 6 sessions, so it's not so bad.
I spoke to a few other guys on R1Ms and they both said that they were leaning on the electronics everywhere, which gave me a bit of faith in my own riding abilities, especially after 17 years of not having ridden on track.
After all of this though, I'm finding the idea of moving to something like an S1000RR really appealing...not that I can afford it yet, but just so that I can push the throttle limits a bit more on corner-exit and experience a new-age in motorcycle development.
