23 Oct Trackday (Full Ride Report)

So I finally managed to weed my way through the 800-someodd photos that Kelly and I took while out at the track a week ago.  I pulled a bonehead and left the ‘High ISO Noise Reduction’ setting on ‘Strong’, which limits the cache to 2 shots (vs 15+ jpegs)… and she still managed to shoot that many photos.  Where to start…

Facilities:
The track at Inde Motorsports Park is brand new, as are the buildings and paddock area.  There was plenty of space for everyone to park trailers, and they had bathrooms with full plumbing, sinks, and showers.  Definitely might have to look into camping out there and doing a 2-day weekend some time next spring.  The apparent plan is to plumb in water and power to all the parking spots along the edges of the paddock area, which would be most excellent.  The track itself has fresh pavement and good curbing on the insides of the corners.  Some of the guys said “there’s all this elevation change etc, etc” when describing the track, but I really didn’t find it too technical.  There were a couple of ‘fast’ lines in the corners, but even with the two blind hills there wasn’t anything unexpected going on since you didn’t have to turn going over them.  There is one chicane that goes over a hill then down into a right-hander, but that wasn’t so much a chicane as a short left after a double-apex right (if you strung in the previous corner).  My impression after one day?  Good track for a first trackday, as it’s got enough track for a newbie to spend most of the day learning sections, and none of the corners are really such that they’ll ‘catch you out’ if you go in too hot.  As far as ‘technicality’ goes, The Dragon in TN/NC is a more technical ‘road’, especially since you have to stay in your own lane, as is Arroyo Seco in Deming NM.

TI2TT crew:
Great group of folks.  The group breakdown was good, with the B group apparently being full with 25 bikes.  Since I went with Mark and Janet instead of Mark and his son Aaron, they were nice enough to let her drop down from the B group into C, since Aaron has a couple of CCS championships, and this was her first trackday. Even with a full B group, with 2.75 miles of track, I didn’t really run into too much traffic on the course.  Janet was on Aaron’s R6, and looked pretty good out on the track for it being her first time:

The control riders were a good group, and were available to either follow or be followed to show you the lines or observe your technique.  By the end of the day I was consistently catching up to them in the B-group, so maybe I’ll ask one to follow me next time out and see if there’s anywhere I can really improve.  Didn’t feel like I had quite figured out all the sections until the last session, but next time I should be able to knock another couple seconds off my lap times by going all-out in a couple of the ‘coasting’ sections at two points on the track.  A couple of the C group riders did a follow the leader stint during one of the mid-day sessions, and a couple of others got 1-on-1 instruction as well:

Location:
It was a really gorgeous area, kinda tucked in the hills southwest of Willcox.  There’s an observation tower near the start-finish line where you can see a good chunk of the track, and where we were able to get some pretty good pictures.  Kelly noticed a windmill off to the north and didn’t say anything so she could take pictures of it and surprise me.  Pretty scenic spot:

There were a couple of old jets parked inside turns 1 and 2, and Mark noticed them the first time out… while I didn’t even note that they were there until he said something back in the paddock.  I tend to get a bit of tunnel-vision when on track, and if it’s outside the curbing, I don’t notice as much.  Kelly could see them from the tower when I took off down the main straight though:

The tower also served as a good vantage point from which to see the entry to the chicane just prior to the start-finish line.  The first couple of sessions I was frustrated because there are a couple of big bumps in the pavement there.  After going up to the tower and watching the A group guys take the entry much wider than I had and having the bumps not upset their suspension because they were still leaned over, but had finished turning already flipped the switch for me.  Did much better the next couple of sessions:

Saw the fastest guy there back in the paddock during the lunch break:

(should probably have told the track crew on him though… he was pulling wheelies in the paddock)

Afternoon sessions went a little faster each time, and after the 5th I thought I had one more in me.  I was informed that Kelly had figured out the right spot to take pictures from, and that I had to go out for another session…  Of course after looking at her pictures, I did the last session running turn 1 very wide every time so I was ‘in the sweet spot’ for taking pictures, even though straight up the inside out of the last corner was the fastest way into and then out of turn 1:

She had gotten some really, really cool images while trying to figure out the best place to stand outside turn 1.  Best shot of the day, even though I’m not in it:

Mark had a good day, and by the end of the day ‘had figured out which corners were coming up next’ as he put it.  There were a couple in the middle that kinda looked all similar, so I can definitely see how that would throw someone off.  Here’s a couple of shots of him dicing it up running around the first couple of turns:

Like I said, I ran the last session wide through turn 1, which I think would probably cut 1/3 of a second or so off my lap times next time I’m out there (by going straight), but it made for better pictures:

Again, it was a good day overall.  Based on there being a race in Phoenix that weekend, the pro photographer didn’t show.  Kinda makes me wonder if I should check into what it would take to get picture hosting like Killboy does for the Dragon and see about paying the $100 vendor fee so I can be an ‘official’ photographer and get some better pictures, then sell them.  I’ve got a couple of months until they run there in the spring, and I’ll definitely look into the Phoenix race schedule to see if that opportunity might present itself.  We’ll see.  Until then I’ll just have to keep riding.

And posting YouTube videos of my fastest laps…

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