jdsbusa
Registered
Had a blast at my "local" track yesterday, unfortunately it didn't end on a good note, not a terrible one, but not good. 
The track has a nice front straight where the 600 guys see around 145 before closing the throttle for turn 1, as the day went on I got more comfortable and kept pushing the front straight topping 160 before shutting it down. Back tire got greasy closing down at one point started locking up and I had 2 options, low side in turn one on the asphalt or head for the grass and hope for the best. Took option 2 and almost saved it but at the last second I saw marshland and the thought of ingesting water into a running engine didn't sound so hot so I tossed her left and bailed right so as to not let the thing crush me. The grass was very wet so it was a soft landing - didn't even grass stain the leathers it was so wet. Speed was down around 25-30 est. by then so damage actually turned out minimal. Windscreen exploded, right side fairing has 2 cracks so it's going to need replaced (posted a wanted classified for anyone that might have one in decent shape laying around they want to sell). Not sore in the least bit, gear did it's job and the LSL sliders on the bike kept damage to a minimum. There's a few scratches from all the mud/grass I slid in but other than that she's not too bad. I'm sure weather played a role as it never really got out of the 40's yesterday - very cold conditions and a lot of people gave up after 5 sessions because we kept getting rain off/on in parts of the track so a couple turns would be dry then you'd run into wet turns which really throws off the rhythm. We had just got a spout of rain on the previous lap which hit turns 1-3 but the corner workers hadn't thrown up the weather flag to warn us in time. I certainly got off easy, 2 other guys went down on the same session as I did due to wet track but their rides were trailered back to the pits missing a lot more than a windscreen. One of them was seen kartwheeling off the track - never saw the bike but it couldn't have been pretty. The other bike was a blue R6 missing most of it's tail section from what I could see a couple hundred feet away as it was towed by.
It was a blast anyway. I might have to see about some trackday plastics for the bike like BusaWhipped has until I can get a cheap 600/750 to run as a dedicated bike. No pics yet, did have video running and you can distinctly hear the back end locking up several times as I tried to bring the speed down. I was a little hesitant to pull harder on the front and risk a high-side, probably best that I didn't the way things worked out in the end.
The track has a nice front straight where the 600 guys see around 145 before closing the throttle for turn 1, as the day went on I got more comfortable and kept pushing the front straight topping 160 before shutting it down. Back tire got greasy closing down at one point started locking up and I had 2 options, low side in turn one on the asphalt or head for the grass and hope for the best. Took option 2 and almost saved it but at the last second I saw marshland and the thought of ingesting water into a running engine didn't sound so hot so I tossed her left and bailed right so as to not let the thing crush me. The grass was very wet so it was a soft landing - didn't even grass stain the leathers it was so wet. Speed was down around 25-30 est. by then so damage actually turned out minimal. Windscreen exploded, right side fairing has 2 cracks so it's going to need replaced (posted a wanted classified for anyone that might have one in decent shape laying around they want to sell). Not sore in the least bit, gear did it's job and the LSL sliders on the bike kept damage to a minimum. There's a few scratches from all the mud/grass I slid in but other than that she's not too bad. I'm sure weather played a role as it never really got out of the 40's yesterday - very cold conditions and a lot of people gave up after 5 sessions because we kept getting rain off/on in parts of the track so a couple turns would be dry then you'd run into wet turns which really throws off the rhythm. We had just got a spout of rain on the previous lap which hit turns 1-3 but the corner workers hadn't thrown up the weather flag to warn us in time. I certainly got off easy, 2 other guys went down on the same session as I did due to wet track but their rides were trailered back to the pits missing a lot more than a windscreen. One of them was seen kartwheeling off the track - never saw the bike but it couldn't have been pretty. The other bike was a blue R6 missing most of it's tail section from what I could see a couple hundred feet away as it was towed by. It was a blast anyway. I might have to see about some trackday plastics for the bike like BusaWhipped has until I can get a cheap 600/750 to run as a dedicated bike. No pics yet, did have video running and you can distinctly hear the back end locking up several times as I tried to bring the speed down. I was a little hesitant to pull harder on the front and risk a high-side, probably best that I didn't the way things worked out in the end.
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Any track day you can walk and ride away from is a success. 
I did both.
