Donington Park Trackday Report: 19/03/05

[iCraig]

Well yesterday was my first trackday and It was at Donington Park in Leicestershire, and this what happened.

I awoke at abot 5am yesterday morning, to get up and get ready as Donington is 80 Miles away from me. I eventually set off at 6:15am and arrived at Donington Park at 7:45. I quickly found everyone including doing there, whom were Shaun, M1ke, Wave2k and Silver and his other half Jeanette.

After buggering about getting bikes off trailers and such like we decided to go and sign on. At sign on we noticed they were very very relaxed and never even checked our licences .

So after that we went back to the garage and I began prepping the GPZ up to take it on track, which Wave2k kindly completed for me while I was in the briefing which was expertly done by racer Jamie Whitham. After that I felt well and truely nervous, and was worrying about crashing!

On returning to the bike I had found wave had managed to remove my mirrors and my number plate and I was ready to ride! 9:45 soon came and it was time for the novices to go out.
By this point I was shaking more than a really shakey thing, but as soon as I got out on track I began to relax, although I was a tad slow and I managed to get lapped a few times by the faster riders.

But as the session went on I found myself becoming a little more confident and I didn't take long before I was learning the circuit.

In the next few sessions I felt myself getting faster and faster, I was no longer getting lapped, just staying in the middle of the group.

I then began to get more and more confidence on the bike and noticed the tyres on my bike (Bridgestone BT45's) stick like shit to a blanket and weren't loosing any grip right over to the edge so I was leaving it later and later to brake and lean into corners. And with Donington National being such a fast circuit I was getting hindered by many of the big bikes that had just taken over me on the faster parts of the circuit on the corners, so much so I outbraked a GSXR600K4 on Goddard me with a single disk upfront which was really really spongy though running Carbone Lorraine Sintered pads and him with twin discs.
He did blast past me on the start finish straight though.

By the second to last session I was totally knackered and started to loose my concentration abit and I managed to get a massive headache too, which wasn't helping either. I felt the session was one of my slowest bar the first one in the morning and I found myself lapsing on goddard where I earlier outbraked a GSXR, I found I didn't brake enough to meet the second part of the bend and decided rather than chancing it and throwing my bike accross the track I went a bit off road and went accross the grass, and I managed to stay on too!
After that I did a few more laps and decided to retire early as I knew if I had of ridden any more I would have lost it totally.

I decided to sit the last session out and began to put the GPZ back to being road legal, so after I went and watched Mike and Damon (Silver) ride around and I got some lap times of them, Mikes Fastest was 1:33.82 and Silvers was around the 1:30.50 mark.

One thing I did notice about the day is that there were hardly any people there so we got 25 minute sessions each time and there were hardly any marshalls and it seemed to be the instructors whom were helping people out of the gravel . Though luckily no one binned it at all badly and there were no red flags at all either .

All in all a great day and I would like to thank Jeanette and Damon for being really friendly and letting me use their tools and taking photos, and also thanks to Keith for also taking some blinding photos and giving me a DVD with them all on .

Me
https://www.craiggiles2.f2s.com/gpzdon.JPG

Silver
https://www.craiggiles2.f2s.com/sildon.JPG

M1ke
https://www.craiggiles2.f2s.com/m1kdon.JPG

[displaced]

Congrats Craig! Looks like you had a blast!

I have never been on the track either. I dunno---it's looks so.....daunting.

[Black Knight]

Thanks for that, its an incentive for me to get my arse in gear and get a day booked.

[Silver]

Good day all round (especially when found the cure to my visor misting up would be to actually open the vents )

I just remembered, didn't Shaun and Wave get video of Mike's gravel "incident"?

[Shaun]

Yes it was caught on camera, Mike will probably make a video up when he gets time and include that in it.

I'm looking forward to doing cadwell in may now, was a bit gutted I wasn't out there yesterday!

[M1ke]

My video is up here https://www.asge78.dsl.pipex.com/Donington1.wmv

My little fuck up was caused by the clutch cable coming undone, resulting in my trying to change gear without a clutch.... locking the rear wheel into the bend.

Other than this little moment I had a really good day, I learnt the track really quickly, my knee touched down on the second lap of the first session which was nice.

All the bikes there were really big and fast other than Craig (gpz500) Myself (zxr400) and some guy on a RS250. I saw the RS250 and looked forward to some competition

https://www.asge78.dsl.pipex.com/1.jpg

Sadly he wasn't going at much of a pace so I set my sights slightly higher...

https://www.asge78.dsl.pipex.com/2.jpg

I managed to stick to this chap through 5-6 laps, he was abliterating me on the straights and I was playing catch up for the rest of the time. Donington is a good track to go for your first one however I found it was far too straight for the little 400cc to overtake the litre bikes and make it stick.

Anyway, here are a few pictures that keith took of me, (thanks!)

https://www.asge78.dsl.pipex.com/3.jpg
https://www.asge78.dsl.pipex.com/4.jpg
https://www.asge78.dsl.pipex.com/5.jpg
https://www.asge78.dsl.pipex.com/6.jpg
https://www.asge78.dsl.pipex.com/7.jpg

[Silver]

Cool video

My legs still ache today. It was nice having the trailer for the first time though so I'd didn't have to ride to and from the circuit.

Took me a lot of the day to get used to the way the SRAD pulls instead of my 750. I thought something was wrong until I remembered that the older GSXRs were renowned for being "two-strokesque" with their powerband. I kept coming out of Goddard's in the wrong gear, expecting it to pull like my 750, whereas it needed about 9000rpm to get going I also need to sort out my minor fuel leak that had them considering not to let me out of the last session, and then making me paranoid! Not to mention the jockey wheel I mashed up on the way home. I'm glad Mike's bike was easy enough to fix though otherwise he would have missed half the day and been well pissed off.

I should be getting the track photographer's pictures through soon, so I'll post some of them if they're any good. Keith has also kindly posted me a DVD with the pictures he took on it

Can't wait for the next one now. I'm considering Rockingham on the 10th April (anti-clockwise, loads of left handers) and then the rescheduled Brands Hatch in May.

[zip70]

i would like to do a anti clockwise trackday as i r#think i am better at left handers for some reason! do ther vary? are most clockwise or anti clockwise?!

cheers
____________________
gixer 6

[McJamweasel]

Makes me realise how badly I want to do a Donny trackday.

Bastards.
____________________
BCF: Be yourself, just don't be an arse.

[M1ke]

Prices will hike up now especially with the clocks going forward on sunday.

Most tracks are clockwise.

[Shaun]

Silver, may 31st, cadwell Park, pace day, be there!

Quite a few people going if thats any incentive.

[Wave2k]

Was a great day out
Thanks for shaun for letting me sleep on his rock hard floor for a few hours.
One thing i noticed about this trackday though,
was the very poor marshalling, there wasnt many there at all
we managed to climp up a marshall post and film from up there.
also a guy on a blade crashed on the first corner and had to wave an instructer to help him dig it out of gravel.
____________________
Ducati 1299 Panigale
2009 Corvette C6 z51
RS125->CBR400->RXS100->GSXR750K2->Ducati749S->CBR600RR5->TL1000R->DRz400->RSVR1000->Honda VTR SP1->CBR400->GSXR1000K6->Honda H100->CBR600RR3->Ducati1299

[Silver]

Finally got all the pictures sorted and posted a selection on my site here. The track photographer's pictures turned up today, and the ones Jeanette (and Keith) took on the day are actually better! I should demand a refund!