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iCraig |
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iCraig World Chat Champion
Joined: 05 Jun 2004 Karma :
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Posted: 12:00 - 20 Mar 2005 Post subject: Donington Park Trackday Report: 19/03/05 |
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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 |
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displaced |
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displaced Two Stroke Sniffer
Joined: 20 Mar 2005 Karma :
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Black Knight |
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Black Knight World Chat Champion
Joined: 22 Feb 2005 Karma :
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Silver |
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Silver World Chat Champion
Joined: 03 Oct 2004 Karma :
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Posted: 15:58 - 20 Mar 2005 Post subject: |
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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"? |
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Shaun |
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Shaun Likes 'em bent
Joined: 17 May 2003 Karma :
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M1ke |
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M1ke Ped Boi
Joined: 11 Jun 2002 Karma :
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Silver |
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Silver World Chat Champion
Joined: 03 Oct 2004 Karma :
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Posted: 21:04 - 21 Mar 2005 Post subject: |
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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. |
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zip70 |
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zip70 Nova Slayer
Joined: 02 Jul 2004 Karma :
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McJamweasel |
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McJamweasel BCF Junkie
Joined: 22 Mar 2002 Karma :
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M1ke |
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M1ke Ped Boi
Joined: 11 Jun 2002 Karma :
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Shaun |
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Shaun Likes 'em bent
Joined: 17 May 2003 Karma :
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Posted: 23:01 - 21 Mar 2005 Post subject: |
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Silver, may 31st, cadwell Park, pace day, be there!
Quite a few people going if thats any incentive. |
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Wave2k |
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Wave2k G's Stalker
Joined: 06 Apr 2004 Karma :
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Posted: 23:19 - 21 Mar 2005 Post subject: |
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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 |
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Silver |
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Silver World Chat Champion
Joined: 03 Oct 2004 Karma :
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Old Thread Alert!
The last post was made 19 years, 34 days ago. Instead of replying here, would creating a new thread be more useful? |
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