Mini One-Day Champ School

I am really excited to tell you about my last track event, a two day event that turned into a three day event, the extra day being on the front end. And a little bit about life, not that I’m all-knowing, but my recent life lessons.

Being a season pass holder for Track Time, a motorcycle track day organization, we had a track day event scheduled for July 2nd and 3rd at The Ridge Motorsports Park. About a week and half before this, I got an advertisement from Yamaha Champions Riding School (YCRS) on my Instagram feed. It was for a mini one day school compared to their typical multi-day school, held at The Ridge the day before Track Time’s event, Monday, July 1st and the day after a MotoAmerica race weekend (professional, national race organization). Since I didn’t have any instruction lined up this year, and feeling like I needed a mid-season checkup. I decided to sign up and pay for this one day school. The down side was a 5:1 student to instructor ratio. I have been gratefully spoiled in my recent years of riding on track, having one on one instruction from: Mark Price, Ken Hill, George Grass and Pat Farrand.

In the week leading up to my three day track event, I was saying, “Life is really making me work hard for this.” But that was incorrect. I am the one who ordered the truck’s transmission filter and gasket, late. Which would leave me in a crunch time zone if any problems would arise while performing an all fluid change on the truck. If you read last week’s newsletter, you already know.

When I went to change the oil on the RC51, the oil came out looking like a McDonnald’s Chocolate Milkshake. Even my wife visited the garage and said, “What’s that?” Coolant got into the oil. We have always known that the RC51 was drinking a little coolant. We thought that it might have been a head gasket, but now we know for sure, it’s the water pump seal. From the truck problem to the RC51 problem, I had lost two and half to three days of preparation for the upcoming track event. Luckily I have multiple track bikes. Since YCRS recommended street tires and kickstands, I brought my Kawasaki ZX6RR for the school and the Yamaha R1 with slicks to the regular track days. I was up till midnight before my (school) track day, packing and getting things ready. If not clearly obvious, this is not how you prepare for something that requires focus and has consequences. The alarm went off at 03:30 the next morning and I headed to the track around 05:00. When I got to the track I was supposed to meet with Josh from Aprilia. Josh? Aprilia? You might be asking yourself, “I thought this was a YCRS thing?” It took me 45 minutes to get through registration and tech (bike inspection), a process that usually takes five to ten minutes. The problem, it was an Aprilia Track Day, although non-Aprilias were allowed, Piaggio (Aprilia’s owners) rented the track, but OPRT (another track day organization) was running the track day and YCRS was sharing the track for their school. Getting three and half hours of sleep and arriving at the track with this mess?! Things were not looking good at all.

Cody Wyman, who recently won the Super Hooligans race at The Ridge on Saturday and Robertino Pietri, an international level racer (Moto 2) were our instructors for the day. They divided us into groups, by asking us our level of riding. I said, “I am the slowest guy in the A group.” Meaning, I am the slowest guy in the fastest group. Robertino, “Tino” for short, took me and another guy out on track to assess our skill level. Remember, it was supposed to be a 5:1, student to instructor ratio. Finally, things were starting to look up. I let the other guy, Micheal, ride behind Tino and I would be the caboose. Micheal struggled with the typical racing line and we later found out that he hadn’t been on track in ten years. I wanted to pass Micheal so badly, but this wasn’t the situation for that. Tino had mirrors on his borrowed Aprilia and he could see both of us. After the on track session, Tino asked me, “How much more pace do you have?” “A lot more.”, I said. Micheal’s pace was more of the other students in class, which was a novice/beginner pace. Not a bad thing at all, everyone starts at the beginner pace. At this time in your riding development, it is crucial to develop good habits, so you don’t have to break bad ones as you get faster. Since the riding pace was so vastly different, it only made sense that Tino would take me and Cody would take the rest of the students. Does this mean that I would get one on one instruction from an international racer? Yeeep! Oh-boy, all the hell I went through to get to this day was worth-it! This is that life experience I was talking about in the beginning of this newsletter. It’s just a reminder that when life gets tough, even if it’s your own fault, keep pushing through it. You’ll get rewarded.

Let me tell you about Robertino “Tino” Pietri. He has some advantages that would normally be thought of as disadvantages. This is going to sound bad, but just hear me out. It seemed to me that he is more fluent in Spanish than English, you’d think, disadvantage. Wrong. Because of his thick Latin-American accent and his lack of English vocabulary, you really need to lean in and focus on what he is saying. This makes you pay attention to him! Also, because of his lesser English vocabulary, he will animate actions that need to be performed on the motorcycle with noises (engine and tires), hand, foot and body movements, and running and walking around the corner of a table (apex) to point out my over-slowing for corners. This is helpful for visual learners, like me. Again, with less English words, you don’t have the ability to sugar-coat things. He tells you straight forward, what you are doing, good and bad. This is so refreshing when it comes to instruction. It cuts out all the bullshit.

He did get frustrated with me in the second to last session. He was frustrated because I had the speed to catch up to other riders on track, however, I struggled to pass them. His frustration is quite understandable. He got so frustrated that he stopped following me and went on to have fun the rest of that session. For the last session of the day we moved from the B group to the A group, so there would be less traffic (slower riders).

Tino would wink at me after we would have a talk. At first I was like, “Who is this guy?” But later realized that’s his way of nonverbal way of saying, “You got this man!” This guy just oozes confidence. Not cocky-ness, confidence.

He gave me a homework assignment. It is: To figure out what I am doing so well on the left-hand turns that I am not doing on the right-hand turns. I also have a one page Word document that I wrote early the next morning of things I need to work on; so I would not forget. Here are some of the major ones:

• Butt only on the left or right side of the seat. Never in the middle. (I would always move my butt to the middle of the seat between corners. Notty-boy!)

• Scanning creates speed. (I wasn’t looking more than one reference point ahead.)

• More head less butt. (Meaning my butt is too far off to the inside, which doesn’t allow my outside leg to lock into the tank and footpeg. And move my head more off to the inside.)

• I am too abrupt going to the brakes. (Build that 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 percent of initial brake pressure.)

• I am too abrupt going to the gas. (I have square hands to the throttle, 90 degrees, like the way you hold a dumbbell, both hands should be pointing to the outside of the turn. Example: Right-hand turn, your fingers on both hands should be pointing to the left.)

• Letting it roll into the corner. (Not scanning enough, which causes over-slowing and not trusting your tires. You got this man! Wink.)

I don’t want to know Tino any better. I only want to know him as an instructor. I say this because if I get to know him, I will see that he has faults just like any person, then he won’t be a hero figure any more. I would be one hero less, instead of one hero gained. A 46 year old with heroes, you bet!

Oh, I almost forgot to tell you. One of my biggest understandings came from the classroom; of why you don’t ride a 600cc bike like the way you ride a 1,000cc bike. It was explained to me like this (not exact words). If you are turning, what opens up the radius? Gas/throttle/acceleration. Now imagine if you are turning and you apply a little bit of gas, your radius opens up a little bit, if you apply a lot of gas, your radius opens up a lot. Same goes with the type of engine you have. Maybe with a 250cc bike, you can open the throttle to 100% and it doesn’t change your radius because of the lack of power, but if you tried that on a 1,000cc bike, you’d open up the radius so much that you’d run off track. To take advantage of the power from a 1,000cc motorcycle you need to get it turned more, which means you need to slow it down more, once you have a straighter direction, then you twist the throttle and take advantage of its power. This is why high power vehicles are point and shoot, where low powered vehicles can make fast sweeping turns. Mind-blown.

I also realized that I never said anything about the following two regular track days. I can sum that up in one picture: