More riders?

Don't you love the involuntary old guy noises you make in the morning?

 

I was at a Nelson Ledges track day the Friday before a WERA race day to get extra practice. Of course I raced the next day.

On Friday I started talking to a guy pitted close and asked him if he was racing the week end. He was not but regularly went to track days. I asked him if he had raced before and he told me he had a while back but gave excuses (bla bla) for not racing now. He was a nice enough fella but I do suspect the thought of not being out front is why he was not racing.

Is there any merit to a beginner class where there is less mental pressure? I know this may be a no go because of precious track time to another class or maybe it was tried and didn't work.

Here is another dumb idea. WERA do their own track days the day before race day. I'm sure this is not a new idea.

 

That seems a bit unfair to me. Still requires a pretty big commitment to have the bike, schedule the time, have the gear, some basic tools, trailer the bike there, pay the gas, etc. The sport isn't that big, and track day riders are generally not that far off of what "we" do. There's plenty of people there working on getting better and having fun in the process. But yeah, to your point, it is more laid back and you can control your schedule differently than a race day.

Like the Novice class?

 

I think it's kind of rude.
And really, I think that track day people who hang out on forums and are open to the idea of racing are very likely to already know of this place.

 

I can already see the response: "CCS Sucks!"

 

We haven't had a good old fashioned involuntary username change around here for a while

 

Didn't mean to sound like a dick. I'm coming from a time when the only way to be on a track was to race, and that's a pretty big commitment. Probably should have worded it different.

 

You didn't come across as a dick. I get you.

While this doesn't apply to everyone, I think part of the frustration or whatever for me is similar to getting street guys out to the track. I know what they're missing and that they'd probably love it (again, not all of them) but it's just getting them over that hump to try it.

Feels the same for racing. For a good chunk of them it's just getting past their preconceived notions to get to the other side.

 

If you can get someone to actually grid up just once, they’ll never look at track days the same way again. For most people, it’s just too much commitment, and they can always tell their coworkers/family etc. that they “race” anyway, so why bother actually doing it. Hopefully next year I can drag some of the people I’ve been harassing about it to a race weekend, but I’m way too busy right now to even get myself out there. (More excuses)

 

How many race entries do you have to your name in the last 3 years?

 

One

 

So what’s your excuse? Lack of commitment, as you stated earlier?

 

Age. I'm 62 and I checked out of racing in 2019. Then about 3 months ago my son started talking shit about how he could have beat me if we were on the same bikes (we raced in different classes before) and the next thing you know, I bought an SV from Mark and my son is in the process of buying one from another member here and we're going racing next season.

 

This reminds me of when my son was coming up. After playing on pocket bikes for a year, he was riding around on a NSR 50 for awhile. I went and bought a NSR 50 to race against him. He instantly got 2 seconds faster per lap as he didn't want the old man to beat him.

 

And I'm sure you were one proud dad. Nothing makes me happier than when my boy does better than me.

 

Always wondered why "Time Attack" racing hasn't worked (Or even been tried?) for motorcycles.

 

As someone that just did their first race in August and can't stop thinking about getting back out there next year: the lack of good youtube (and related) material that goes into the logistics and subtleties made it really hard to pull the trigger. I grew up a race fan and only grew the balls to do my first track day in 2020, but I knew I wanted to race after that first day. I spent months before the first track day researching and planning the thing out without any help because I didn't know anybody else that track rides/races. There was enough material out there that I felt reasonably comfortable I could do it without dying or making an ass of myself. When I started researching how to get into racing, I had far less to go off of. And there are a lot more subtleties involved as I learned. I know there are rulebooks and documented procedures, and I read them all. But I never felt confident.

I don't think it's all ego or commitment issues (though my relatively inexperienced opinion would agree that's probably the majority)--my major hurdle was that I didn't want to impact the outcome of a race. I knew how much time and effort the top guys and gals were putting into this, and I struggled with the unknown of how I'd react in a pressure situation knowing I'd probably get in a position of being lapped when I started. I'd mentioned to one of the control riders also on an sv650 that I wanted to try racing in a few years, and he told me to just get it going now. Sign up now. He'd answer any question I had. I'd done like 20 track days. He went out of his way on many occasions to answer all my questions via email and a few long phone calls and offered to have me pit with him that weekend. I signed up to do the new racers license course (this was CCS w/ learning curves--so not wera, I know... but you guys aren't at Blackhawk), and I intended to do the course Saturday, camp, and then spectate and try to understand all the logistics of a race day Sunday. At the end of the day Saturday, I'm guessing no less than 10 people told me I'd regret it if I spent the full winter without signing up that Sunday to race. And they were right.

I didn't (negatively) affect the outcome of a race, I didn't do anything stupid, I didn't wheelie myself off the back of the bike during my first ever standing start, and I had probably the most fun day of my life. And I even got a little trophy in the amateur small bikes rookie class race (3/8) I didn't realize until I was packing up. But if I hadn't forced myself to be outgoing during all those track days in the previous two years, I probably wouldn't have even gotten signed up for a race. Literally. I couldn't figure out how and didn't know when to do it. If it wasn't for about 10 different people just going out of their way helping me out with all the little things I'd never even considered before, I would have had a bad day. Instead, it was awesome. In 8 track days in 2022, I dropped my (very meager, I'm aware) time at Blackhawk from 1:35 to 1:28. In the second race day practice I'd gotten down to the 1:24s just by being around fast people on similar bikes--which was unfathomable to me. And I watch the footage from the one race I recorded and I want to scream because I can see just how many places I'm messing up--I just want to get back out there and fix it! And also I got lapped on my last race, and I don't want that to happen again.

I've learned that it's not worth the time to try to "force" my friends to sign up to do a track day. Despite the fact I know that many of them would love it, I think there is a fear aspect to it on the other end of the ego argument. And pressuring someone into something rarely works out well.

On the flipside, one guy that asked to borrow a wrench or something at my second track day at Road America--that I've since become good friends with--seems absolutely excited that I did the race course and wants to do it himself after I'd been talking it up. I got the urge to type this out now because we've been texting back and forth today about planning schedules for next year. I'm in my mid-30's, I think he turns 60 this year. Both of us are asking ourselves "why didn't we do this sooner?".

 

Why does RRW have a yearly Track Day Directory but not a "Thinking about racing?" Directory. Matt's description of a lack of material out there for the curious shows why it's so important to grease the skids. A few will be adventurous enough to dive in, but so many think there's some invisible barrier. In my 20's (1990's) I wanted to race but had no idea how to go about it, didn't know a soul who did it, and there was nothing in Cycle World about how to get started so I sat on the sidelines. In 2006 a friend got me to an STT day and got me so fired up to ride fast on the track, but that wasn't enough to dive in. It wasn't until I was sitting at the bar with a friend from work talking about bikes and found out he raced - that's what got me in. He guided me through the whole process on my first weekend and that was it. I've raced every year for 15 years since. Making it easy and holding the hands of those on the fence is a key.

 

Listen buddy, I know you're new here, but we already have a guy on this forum that types out huge novels. Its me.

JUST KIDDING. lol Reading that made me super excited. I'm super happy you got on grid and gave it a shot. Reading through your experience brought back so many good memories of my first race weekend. lol I did one STT weekend at the track and was convinced to go racing the VERY NEXT weekend. At Blackhawk no less. I had the same mindset as you "don't do anything stupid, and don't wheelie yourself into the pavement on the start"

I had never been to BHF before and by the end of the practice day on Saturday I think I was running 20-21's. I did have an off in T7 where I went down. (misjudged my brake marker at the kink and then ran out of race track on the outside.)This spooked me up a bit because I was actually getting married the VERY NEXT weekend. lol However, all of the guys I was pitted with told me I should definitely give it a shot. So, Sunday morning I signed up for 2-3 races. Started dead last in all of them and didn't finish last in any of them lol. I wasn't able to do the morning practice because it had rained and the track was still wet.. So I just jumped right into the Sunday races.. I did get lapped in the GTU race, but it was by Jody Barry and he was riding one of Jason Farrell's ZX6R's, so that's fair IMO.. It was also a huge eye opener to see how fast you CAN go through the corner. lol he had his elbow down through T7.. During the MWSS race I stalled on grid and immediately started flailing my arms like crazy while they started the race. I then realized I was dead last and that no one was going to hit me. lol I gingerly started the bike and took off as if from a traffic stop and worked on catching up to everyone. lol

My favorite part about the weekend was all of the new friends I had made. I prolly put no less than 5-6 new phone numbers into my contacts. I had been invited to multiple races, get togethers at, peoples houses, track days, etc. The amount of support and motivation I got from people I'd known for less than 48 hours was really incredible. I had raced cars since 2010 and NEVER had the same experience. Only thing that ever came close was skateboarding. Mostly because when you watch someone throw themselves down a set of stairs for 45 minutes and then they finally land the trick they've been trying, I don't think you have a choice but to be really happy for them... whether you know them or not. HAHAHA

 

Sounds like a trackday guy who says they are a club racer is in the same boat as the club racer that thinks they're a legend.