We couldn’t ask for better weather at this time of the year. It was a little cold in the morning but warmed up to a beautiful 18C by lunch. What could you ask more for a mid-April day?
We had rushed like mad to get the bikes ready for this day. We actually finished worked on the bikes at 10:30pm the night before. So getting up at 4:00am was a little hard on the body. We got there at 7:30am which was good timing for registration. We were 3rd in line. After that, we made our way to the Fabi pits and were able to find a spot with some friends right on pit lane. Michelle’s bike was the first one sent to tech. We knew that the best time for an open track was early in the morning. Glad we did that as the track got VERY busy throughout the day. So busy that we skipped our late afternoon sessions. None of us could get a clean lap and were just playing in a freight-train of bikes. Besides, we were both running on tires which had in excess of 100laps on them. So we didn’t mind the early end to our day as it gave us a chance to talk to friends we hadn’t seen all winter.
Our objectives for the morning and early afternoon sessions were to simply get comfortable on the bikes and understand how to setup my new Penske triple-clicker rear shock. Michelle got her lines cleaned up very quickly and was running very smooth. Due to the stress of the freight train of bikes, it was difficult for her to get up to speed. But hey, it’s the first time out this season. Yves had really good success with the new rear shock. The back end was no longer hopping under combined heavy braking and engine braking. Now it would do a nice predictable backend slide. We still have much to learn with this new shock as it has both high and low speed compression settings but we’re off to a good start. Yves only managed to get one almost clean lap (no traffic) and posted a respectable time to be able to compete with the front runners. However, there are about a dozen other doing similar laptimes. Ouch! It’s going to be a crazy season!
We hope to get out to another track day before our first races to get ourselves ready.