The morning was plagued with rain. At least it was a light rain. Michelle had never been in the rain so this track days was a perfect was for her to get some experience. Our morning started out with some tire changes to get her bike setup for the rain. Yves had spent a great deal of time in the rain recently in the opening round of the RACE superseries so he opted to focus on helping Michelle with riding feedback and setup. Michelle was actually the only rider out on the track for the first half hour. Furthermore, less than a handful of riders actually went to play in the rain. Her initial lap times were as you would expect for first time out on rain tires. But as she got in more and more laps, she picked up the pace and cleaned up her lines. Unfortunately, another learning curve is also quickly experienced in rain riding and that’s traction limits. Michelle suffered a crash when setting up for turn 5 (hairpin) of the Pro track. She is not 100% sure of what exactly she did wrong but from other riders behind her, it seems she may have been a bit abrupt on either brakes or body movements when setting up for her turn. She lost the front with very little lean angle, which means she slapped down on the track hard injuring her knee. The bike only had some minor damages but Michelle was not in the best of conditions to return to the track that day.
Yves had the opportunity to do a few sessions in the afternoon. The track was still damp but Yves opted to run on the Pirelli Super Corsa tires. Traction was limited and caused the rear to step out and drift for the first few laps until the tires came up to temp. Thanks to the Penske rear shock recently installed, the rear wheel would hook-up smoothly and allow Yves to get good feel from the bike when experiencing rear-wheel spin. Yves’ laptimes continued to get better as the conditions improved. By late afternoon, despite the cool track, tires approaching 200 laps and limited gearing, Yves was consistently and significantly faster than his 2004 personal best laptime on this circuit.
Michelle hopes to be better in time for her opening round.