ThinkFast
Live Long
Monday, October 5, Sonoma with Z2
Morning tire pressures 29/25. Hot target: 32/28.
Ambient: 77° 9:00am; 90s by 1pm
Hot tire pressures coming in off each session:
Overview
At home my morning started the most relaxed I can recall for a trackday morning, especially considering I was not in my usual “race prep mode” physically or mentally for the week preceding the event. Instead, I was up north hooning around the lake country on the GS with the BARF family for a few days in Lakeport, returning home Sunday afternoon hot, tired and smiling greatly. Nothing a good night’s sleep and an great meal wouldn’t cure with an espresso jump-start the next morning.
Monday on the drive over I enjoyed a beautiful iridescent red, orange and gold-trimmed sunrise over the northern Bay marshland. There was a nice morning chill in the air at the track, as usual, which completely belied the Indian summer heat that was already setting up for its mid-morning entry. Pitting under the grandstand’s shade with my buddy, David, was a no-brainer and gave us plenty of room to spread out and keep our cool throughout the day’s heat.
My non-riding buddy, Ron, came out to check out what a trackday was like and really seemed to enjoy just hanging out in the pits and watching the sessions. It was a fun, 7-session day with over 120 track miles on the odometer by the last checkered flag. The usual number of yellows, a couple of full-course reds, and happily no ambulance rides for anyone, at least as far as I saw. For this track with full sessions that was a great day.
Today I was working on T4, T9B and T11 - all three are odd-ball right handers with no immediately obvious line and each one idiosyncratic in its own unique way.
Fortunately, Z2 includes free instructing to anyone who would like some help, so I took full advantage of that and was introduced to Z2 instructor Bassem for session 5 after lunch to get some help on these. He did a great job on helping me get straightened out on some things.
Some Stories About The Ride
My chilled out start to the day carried right into the first session, waiting a lap or two to get the tires warmed up as I retrieved my Sears Point track files from deep storage and uploaded them into conscious memory. By mid-session I was coming up to my pace pretty well as I remembered where my turn-in points were and how the bike felt when I hit the apexes correctly.
The next sessions reminded me that I still didn’t have good visual references for setting up the entry line, apex and especially the exit for T2, so I started working on those. A blind crest makes sighting your exit curbing impossible until you’re committed, at least if you’re on any kind of a pace, so you have to have visual references you can trust if you don’t want to leave a whole bunch of time on the track in that section.
During a morning session after everyone was up to speed I had a thrill going into T1. Some guy decided to put a pass on me down the front straight. Nothing unusual there - my little R7 runs out of go pretty quickly there when there’s anything with some oomph coming off of T11.
This guy, though, didn’t quite have the juice to get the deal done - and apparently didn’t know it. I had no idea he was back there until we get to the finish line and I do my usual throttle-off, sit up to catch some wind, and start setting up my entry. Just as I sit up I see a wheel appear on my left. Say WHAT? Really dude? Yeah, no, I don’t think so.
I just let off the brakes as I eased over to the left a couple inches to, you know, ‘adjust my line’ [cough cough]. While I didn’t get quite the T1 entry I like, I was still able to get the bike turned and WFO by the time I flew off the exit curbing. As I was turning I could see out of the corner of my eye a lot of red motorcycle coming to nearly a complete stop just before the entry curb behind me.
Turns out it was a big bike, because a few turns later big red came flying by, going around me without any trouble at all. Okay by me. But don’t try to take my corner. What a hoot.
Then there was my failed three-bike late-braking pass attempt heading down into 9. Heading into 7 I caught up to this mini conga line of bikes that looked like a group of buddies out for a nice afternoon ride up on Skyline. So I set them up through the esses, giving myself some room for hard acceleration through the 8B exit and an inside drive to get past all of them over the hill and down into 9.
That worked like a champ. I managed to get past all three bikes before anyone started to tip in and I even had enough of a gap to flare out left a bit to give myself a better entry. Now it was hard on the brakes to get slowed enough for the left turn-in at 9B. Imagine my surprise when I was still carrying too much speed halfway between 9a and b and couldn’t turn the bike. Yikes. So I stood it up and rode it off the left into the dirt, by then going pretty slow. I stopped and looked over my shoulder as the three buddies all streamed by, followed by another four-bike pack that I’d dusted earlier in the lap. Oh well. there was only one or two laps left in the session and it seemed like everyone had put on the hurry-up, because I wasn’t reeling them in this time. Or more likely I was feeling a bit shell-shocked by what just happened - in all my years of riding this track, missing the bus stop was a new for me. I’ve crashed there on the exit due to too much throttle, but I never overcooked it this way.
Back in the pits I reflected on this and wondered whether it was the tail wind that got me. It was in the afternoon and a pretty strong and steady breeze out of the northwest had come up. You could see it in the American flag flying like a weathervane. At first I thought my pace must’ve been off due to post-lunch body slowdown because I was only seeing 97 instead of 103 on the speedo heading up the dragstrip. Then I realized that that same 6mph that I lost going up the hill on the dragstrip was due to the wind, and it was probably about the same amount I gained going down the hill in the opposite direction into 9.
Well, I don’t know for sure if that’s why I blew that corner, but I do wonder. I sure am glad it wasn’t anything worse. A good reminder to slow ‘er down a bit - not a race.
Detailed notes about the track - for my own records for next time
T1 was its same old nutty self. The set up starts with a full chop on the throttle just at the finish line followed by brake set up and then hard braking to turn in, sighting the exit curbing, clipping the inside with the knee when I get the entry right and not too early, and jumping off the curb on the exit WFO with the bike cushing happily under me and flying up the hill.
I even got a few passes in there as slower riders who were slow into T1 couldn’t get the drive up the hill. I’d usually find them coming down the back straight, sometimes before 9, or the 8 esses or even in 7. too slowly. If I didn’t have the motor or the room to get them before 11, I’d get on them down the front and see where they were braking for 1. If it was early, then I figured I had half of hope in hell of catching them up the hill into 2 because they’d like be dogging it through 1. So it was simply a matter of letting them gap me a bit down the front to give me some room to stay on my pace. When this set up worked, I’m right on their rear wheel as I jump off the exit curb and slingshot past them on the right up the hill before they get to the curbing on the left going up. It’s a ton of fun when it works, which it did a few times, even on some of the inline 4s out there.
T2 was same as before, full of mid-corner bumps right on the geometric fast line, making the actual fast lineno longer where it would’ve been with a smooth track.
None of that was new news, but I needed to recall from my previous day here what my line would be. I played around with entry points at different distances from the curb as well as different lines through the bumps, settling on with entry about 6 ft out, apexed late-mid, with near WFO by exit and carrying me all the way to the end of the exit rumble strip on the left. Scary as hell, but very satisfying when it was done right.
T3 was fine, and happily it presented another passing spot up the short hill there when slower riders didn’t make use of the enormous camber and grip in that bowled turn that was followed by the right hander at the top with a ton of exit room, making for all kinds of funky lines through the right hand 3A at the top.
Passing there was a newish thing for me, as in my racing days there just wasn’t the kind of variability in speed of the others in the race for me to get by them there, so I had a blast being able to pick off riders there a few times.
T4. If you wrote a description of the worst imaginable corner layout, 4 would have to be pretty close to being that. Downhill entry, cross-hill and off-camber from mid-corner through to the exit, and presenting as slightly decreasing radius with a narrowing track through the exit. At least that’s what it looks like to me. In other words, it was a corner to be endured, survived, not ripped through with gusto. At least it wasn’t blind or bumpy, which about all I can say in the positive about it.
The good news is that it’s the same for everyone else, and the stock gearing on the R7 was particularly happy in this corner with the motor right on the powerband and able to spin up immediately mid-corner when I was brave enough to throttle up early.
It was really all came down to just a matter of visual references and perception. The instructor in session 5 gave some simple tips for T4 prior to going out, both showing me how and then watching me execute during our lead-follow.
This helped a lot, and I gained new confidence there. Doing it right made my set up for passing out of T5 up the hill even easier with the R7 pulling like a dragster off of 4. I’d just hang a little back to the left of the bike in front as we came around T5 and then quickly flare out to the left up the hill. When I got it right and they weren’t fast enough, I’d have a wheel or better on them before the crest. And if they headed left out of 5 it made the job easier - just a right-side outside pass going up the hill and gapping them wide on the outside through the carousel. An absolute hoot that is - never gets old, and works almost every time.
I felt pretty solid on the T6 exit, dragstrip and T7 complex, the bike’s speedo giving a reliable indicator of my pace as I approached the #3 brake marker. 103mph meant I was on it and cleared for stoppie-level braking into 7, regardless of what line I was on. Slower bikes were passed, faster bikes were either let go, or hung with until I could reel them in later.
T9 bus stop exit had its usual bumps - two or three now, instead of just the one at the pavement seam back in my racing days - making high lean angles and aggressive exit throttle always feel risky.
I got over the lean angle concerns, learning that I could get all the way over there and the bike would hang on. Picking it back up was a little more challenging, and the instructor noted that I wasn’t finishing my turns in several corners, leaving too much available track unused at the exit. T9 was one of those. I’d wait until I hit the last bump and got the bike more stood up before getting on the throttle hard. But since I was pinching the exit line I was using more lean than I needed and not getting the drive up to 10 that I could’ve. Still working on that, but was getting better.
T11 and my bike don’t like each other. I find it nearly impossible to make a tight line there. Running wide on the exit puts me on the giant painted area while still carrying some lean angle, meaning that adding too much throttle will spin up the rear big time. Ask me how I know.
Bassem showed me an interesting line there, with a delayed entry that started way past the inside white line. I tried this a few times and it sort of worked for me, but honestly, to me it’s just another corner that needs to be survived. As one of my old race mentors told me, “the fast guys go fast through the fast corners and slow through the slow corners.”
Lessons learned, areas to work on
Morning tire pressures 29/25. Hot target: 32/28.
Ambient: 77° 9:00am; 90s by 1pm
Hot tire pressures coming in off each session:
- 32/28 hot
- 32/28 hot
- 32/28 hot
Overview
At home my morning started the most relaxed I can recall for a trackday morning, especially considering I was not in my usual “race prep mode” physically or mentally for the week preceding the event. Instead, I was up north hooning around the lake country on the GS with the BARF family for a few days in Lakeport, returning home Sunday afternoon hot, tired and smiling greatly. Nothing a good night’s sleep and an great meal wouldn’t cure with an espresso jump-start the next morning.
Monday on the drive over I enjoyed a beautiful iridescent red, orange and gold-trimmed sunrise over the northern Bay marshland. There was a nice morning chill in the air at the track, as usual, which completely belied the Indian summer heat that was already setting up for its mid-morning entry. Pitting under the grandstand’s shade with my buddy, David, was a no-brainer and gave us plenty of room to spread out and keep our cool throughout the day’s heat.
My non-riding buddy, Ron, came out to check out what a trackday was like and really seemed to enjoy just hanging out in the pits and watching the sessions. It was a fun, 7-session day with over 120 track miles on the odometer by the last checkered flag. The usual number of yellows, a couple of full-course reds, and happily no ambulance rides for anyone, at least as far as I saw. For this track with full sessions that was a great day.
Today I was working on T4, T9B and T11 - all three are odd-ball right handers with no immediately obvious line and each one idiosyncratic in its own unique way.
Fortunately, Z2 includes free instructing to anyone who would like some help, so I took full advantage of that and was introduced to Z2 instructor Bassem for session 5 after lunch to get some help on these. He did a great job on helping me get straightened out on some things.
Some Stories About The Ride
My chilled out start to the day carried right into the first session, waiting a lap or two to get the tires warmed up as I retrieved my Sears Point track files from deep storage and uploaded them into conscious memory. By mid-session I was coming up to my pace pretty well as I remembered where my turn-in points were and how the bike felt when I hit the apexes correctly.
The next sessions reminded me that I still didn’t have good visual references for setting up the entry line, apex and especially the exit for T2, so I started working on those. A blind crest makes sighting your exit curbing impossible until you’re committed, at least if you’re on any kind of a pace, so you have to have visual references you can trust if you don’t want to leave a whole bunch of time on the track in that section.
During a morning session after everyone was up to speed I had a thrill going into T1. Some guy decided to put a pass on me down the front straight. Nothing unusual there - my little R7 runs out of go pretty quickly there when there’s anything with some oomph coming off of T11.
This guy, though, didn’t quite have the juice to get the deal done - and apparently didn’t know it. I had no idea he was back there until we get to the finish line and I do my usual throttle-off, sit up to catch some wind, and start setting up my entry. Just as I sit up I see a wheel appear on my left. Say WHAT? Really dude? Yeah, no, I don’t think so.
I just let off the brakes as I eased over to the left a couple inches to, you know, ‘adjust my line’ [cough cough]. While I didn’t get quite the T1 entry I like, I was still able to get the bike turned and WFO by the time I flew off the exit curbing. As I was turning I could see out of the corner of my eye a lot of red motorcycle coming to nearly a complete stop just before the entry curb behind me.
Turns out it was a big bike, because a few turns later big red came flying by, going around me without any trouble at all. Okay by me. But don’t try to take my corner. What a hoot.
Then there was my failed three-bike late-braking pass attempt heading down into 9. Heading into 7 I caught up to this mini conga line of bikes that looked like a group of buddies out for a nice afternoon ride up on Skyline. So I set them up through the esses, giving myself some room for hard acceleration through the 8B exit and an inside drive to get past all of them over the hill and down into 9.
That worked like a champ. I managed to get past all three bikes before anyone started to tip in and I even had enough of a gap to flare out left a bit to give myself a better entry. Now it was hard on the brakes to get slowed enough for the left turn-in at 9B. Imagine my surprise when I was still carrying too much speed halfway between 9a and b and couldn’t turn the bike. Yikes. So I stood it up and rode it off the left into the dirt, by then going pretty slow. I stopped and looked over my shoulder as the three buddies all streamed by, followed by another four-bike pack that I’d dusted earlier in the lap. Oh well. there was only one or two laps left in the session and it seemed like everyone had put on the hurry-up, because I wasn’t reeling them in this time. Or more likely I was feeling a bit shell-shocked by what just happened - in all my years of riding this track, missing the bus stop was a new for me. I’ve crashed there on the exit due to too much throttle, but I never overcooked it this way.
Back in the pits I reflected on this and wondered whether it was the tail wind that got me. It was in the afternoon and a pretty strong and steady breeze out of the northwest had come up. You could see it in the American flag flying like a weathervane. At first I thought my pace must’ve been off due to post-lunch body slowdown because I was only seeing 97 instead of 103 on the speedo heading up the dragstrip. Then I realized that that same 6mph that I lost going up the hill on the dragstrip was due to the wind, and it was probably about the same amount I gained going down the hill in the opposite direction into 9.
Well, I don’t know for sure if that’s why I blew that corner, but I do wonder. I sure am glad it wasn’t anything worse. A good reminder to slow ‘er down a bit - not a race.
Detailed notes about the track - for my own records for next time
T1 was its same old nutty self. The set up starts with a full chop on the throttle just at the finish line followed by brake set up and then hard braking to turn in, sighting the exit curbing, clipping the inside with the knee when I get the entry right and not too early, and jumping off the curb on the exit WFO with the bike cushing happily under me and flying up the hill.
I even got a few passes in there as slower riders who were slow into T1 couldn’t get the drive up the hill. I’d usually find them coming down the back straight, sometimes before 9, or the 8 esses or even in 7. too slowly. If I didn’t have the motor or the room to get them before 11, I’d get on them down the front and see where they were braking for 1. If it was early, then I figured I had half of hope in hell of catching them up the hill into 2 because they’d like be dogging it through 1. So it was simply a matter of letting them gap me a bit down the front to give me some room to stay on my pace. When this set up worked, I’m right on their rear wheel as I jump off the exit curb and slingshot past them on the right up the hill before they get to the curbing on the left going up. It’s a ton of fun when it works, which it did a few times, even on some of the inline 4s out there.
T2 was same as before, full of mid-corner bumps right on the geometric fast line, making the actual fast lineno longer where it would’ve been with a smooth track.
None of that was new news, but I needed to recall from my previous day here what my line would be. I played around with entry points at different distances from the curb as well as different lines through the bumps, settling on with entry about 6 ft out, apexed late-mid, with near WFO by exit and carrying me all the way to the end of the exit rumble strip on the left. Scary as hell, but very satisfying when it was done right.
T3 was fine, and happily it presented another passing spot up the short hill there when slower riders didn’t make use of the enormous camber and grip in that bowled turn that was followed by the right hander at the top with a ton of exit room, making for all kinds of funky lines through the right hand 3A at the top.
Passing there was a newish thing for me, as in my racing days there just wasn’t the kind of variability in speed of the others in the race for me to get by them there, so I had a blast being able to pick off riders there a few times.
T4. If you wrote a description of the worst imaginable corner layout, 4 would have to be pretty close to being that. Downhill entry, cross-hill and off-camber from mid-corner through to the exit, and presenting as slightly decreasing radius with a narrowing track through the exit. At least that’s what it looks like to me. In other words, it was a corner to be endured, survived, not ripped through with gusto. At least it wasn’t blind or bumpy, which about all I can say in the positive about it.
The good news is that it’s the same for everyone else, and the stock gearing on the R7 was particularly happy in this corner with the motor right on the powerband and able to spin up immediately mid-corner when I was brave enough to throttle up early.
It was really all came down to just a matter of visual references and perception. The instructor in session 5 gave some simple tips for T4 prior to going out, both showing me how and then watching me execute during our lead-follow.
This helped a lot, and I gained new confidence there. Doing it right made my set up for passing out of T5 up the hill even easier with the R7 pulling like a dragster off of 4. I’d just hang a little back to the left of the bike in front as we came around T5 and then quickly flare out to the left up the hill. When I got it right and they weren’t fast enough, I’d have a wheel or better on them before the crest. And if they headed left out of 5 it made the job easier - just a right-side outside pass going up the hill and gapping them wide on the outside through the carousel. An absolute hoot that is - never gets old, and works almost every time.
I felt pretty solid on the T6 exit, dragstrip and T7 complex, the bike’s speedo giving a reliable indicator of my pace as I approached the #3 brake marker. 103mph meant I was on it and cleared for stoppie-level braking into 7, regardless of what line I was on. Slower bikes were passed, faster bikes were either let go, or hung with until I could reel them in later.
T9 bus stop exit had its usual bumps - two or three now, instead of just the one at the pavement seam back in my racing days - making high lean angles and aggressive exit throttle always feel risky.
I got over the lean angle concerns, learning that I could get all the way over there and the bike would hang on. Picking it back up was a little more challenging, and the instructor noted that I wasn’t finishing my turns in several corners, leaving too much available track unused at the exit. T9 was one of those. I’d wait until I hit the last bump and got the bike more stood up before getting on the throttle hard. But since I was pinching the exit line I was using more lean than I needed and not getting the drive up to 10 that I could’ve. Still working on that, but was getting better.
T11 and my bike don’t like each other. I find it nearly impossible to make a tight line there. Running wide on the exit puts me on the giant painted area while still carrying some lean angle, meaning that adding too much throttle will spin up the rear big time. Ask me how I know.
Bassem showed me an interesting line there, with a delayed entry that started way past the inside white line. I tried this a few times and it sort of worked for me, but honestly, to me it’s just another corner that needs to be survived. As one of my old race mentors told me, “the fast guys go fast through the fast corners and slow through the slow corners.”
Lessons learned, areas to work on
- T1 turn in - later is better. Keep working on finding a good visual there so the turn in puts me on a line that I don’t need to adjust or steer to in order to put me on top of the exit curb. And don’t hit that damn inside curbing - did that twice and sent me flying. Scared the hell out of me.
- T2 - spot the entry using the squared off black dark patch about 6 feet wide from the entry. Clip the front left corner of the box. Ride through whatever line feels right - don’t worry about the bumps. Just ride it with slight throttle on. Use the visual reference point to the exit that works - should end up WFO well before bike is up, and all the way out to the end of the exit curb
- T4 - focus on curb for entry and apex.Sight the dirt on the left way past the exit curbing and aim for it, WFO as early as possible. Lots of room and lines through 5, so don’t worry about it.
- T7 - the line I was using worked well - follow the dark road through it. When it’s right you’re tight on the curb at exit, bike is almost stood up, and definitely WFO for that drive toward the esses.
- T9 - drag knee on the left. Strain vision for 10 and use that to pull the bike through. Wait for last bump for hard throttle roll-on, work on finishing the turn, letting the bike drift wide track right on the exit.
- T11 - continue working on entry point and lean angle. Knee drag should be possible here. Requires straining vision past T11, not spotting it.
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