During the very first NEC motorcycle show I attended after bringing home my shiny new Triumph Street Triple R, my brother and I bought our very first sets of leathers. That may seem bizarre to those of you for whom that has always been your standard biking attire, but for many of us whose biking role models were Ewan McGregor rather than Kevin Schwanz, textiles are the default. The plan was to do our first trackday that following summer, but it’s amazing how easily something like that is put off, again and again.
Fast-forward to 2018 and Pat Coneley persuaded me to give his Road Skills Day at Thruxton a go, which aside from a single session at Brand’s Hatch and a terrifying lap of the Nürburgring, was my first real on-track experience. But as you’ll know if you’ve attended one of these yourselves, that was not a trackday. Riding a V-Strom and wearing textiles, we were limited to 100mph with artificial chicanes and had braking and turn-in markers laid out for us to aim for. Remember: Road Skills Day!
I learnt a lot from my instructor, and the experience as a whole, not least of which that it is possible to ride around a racetrack all day without crashing. What’s more, if I could do it on Michelin Pilot Road 5’s on skinny adventure-bike wheels, then it should be even easier on my Triumph. With my girlfriend itching to drag me along to a ‘proper’ trackday, I had run out of excuses, and so signed up for the No Limits Novice group, and prepared to depart for Mallory Park.
I packed a water bottle, tyre pressure gauge and compressor, along with a handful of cereal bars and sandwiches before setting the alarm for 5am. With sign-on at 7:30 and a planned petrol stop just before reaching the track I needed to leave plenty of time to arrive fueled-up and ready for the safety briefing.
As it happened, I needn’t have worried – traffic is understandably light that early in the morning, and unlike almost everyone else who had arrived in the paddock, I had no van to unload, no tyre-warmers to attach and no maintenance to perform. I had even printed and filled out the requested paperwork in advance, something I soon discovered made me practically unique amongst my fellow riders!
After dropping off the forms and collecting the appropriately coloured wristband, I had some time to kill, and began chatting to the other riders I was sharing the garage with. All were trackday veterans, despite several having placed themselves in the same Novice Group as I. Given that I was expecting to be sharing my sessions with nervous riders wobbling around on a variety of inappropriate machinery, this was certainly something of a surprise.
Looking around the crowd at the safety briefing was also enlightening – the vast majority of riders were men in their 40’s, with a few younger riders and two women. Despite this depressing gender imbalance, the sexist banter I was expecting failed to materialise, with my girlfriend experiencing nothing but friendly helpfulness all day. Aside from a few people mistakenly assuming that it was I, not her, riding the tricked-out Fireblade, there was no trace of the prejudice or stereotyping that often follows female riders wherever they go.
Noise testing (another item I had concerns about) proved another non-issue. My Street Triple on it’s after-market Scorpion exhaust had been measured at 105db by the over-zealous tester at Brand’s Hatch, leading me to suspect I’d never pass the 103db maximum allowed at Mallory Park. Assurances from my mechanic proved true however, with the baffled exhaust measuring just 97db when tested according to ACU regulations. If you’ve got a trackday of your own planned, I recommend getting your bike tested ahead of time, but I was pleasantly surprised to hear some fairly noisy bikes fly through under the limit.
When the tannoy called out for Novice riders to come to the pits, I was certainly nervous. How would I know when to brake and when to turn in? Without the usual roadside furniture of trees and streetlights, and the ever-present road-markings, how would I know how fast I was going? My major recollection from the single session at Brand’s Hatch was that the tarmac seemed to go on forever in every direction and that corners came at you out of nowhere. I was worried that I would low-side in the very first bend. I needn’t have worried.
The fact is, the track was very easy to read. Coloured rumble strips on the apexes of all the corners made the edges of the track easy to spot, and after a couple of sighting laps I was already winding the engine up to the limiter and leaning more, all while looking for overtaking opportunities past slower riders. Everything I’d learned at Thruxton came back to me, with braking and turn-in points easy to figure out after a few corners. The trick, just as then, was to start slow and build speed gently over time.
At the end of my first twenty-minute session, I was surprised to discover how warm I was, despite the cool morning air and uninsulated leathers. Remembering the advice on the Road Skills Day I’d brought along – and proceeded to drink – plenty of water, and topped up my energy with a cereal bar or two between sessions. With each of the three groups running back-to-back, I only had limited time to cool off and admire the shrinking chicken strips on my rear tyre before the call to the pit lane rang out once more.
After my second trip out I was already lapping some riders in my group, and out-braking most others in some of the tighter turns. The forward planning and smooth riding we learn from our Observers is just as important on track, and there were quite a few riders on track that day who could benefit from some advanced training. The long, fast corners were giving me difficulty, however, so it was time to seek expert advice specific to track riding.
Noise testing (another item I had concerns about) proved another non-issue. My Street Triple on it’s after-market Scorpion exhaust had been measured at 105db by the over-zealous tester at Brand’s Hatch, leading me to suspect I’d never pass the 103db maximum allowed at Mallory Park. Assurances from my mechanic proved true however, with the baffled exhaust measuring just 97db when tested according to ACU regulations. If you’ve got a trackday of your own planned, I recommend getting your bike tested ahead of time, but I was pleasantly surprised to hear some fairly noisy bikes fly through under the limit.
When the tannoy called out for Novice riders to come to the pits, I was certainly nervous. How would I know when to brake and when to turn in? Without the usual roadside furniture of trees and streetlights, and the ever-present road-markings, how would I know how fast I was going? My major recollection from the single session at Brand’s Hatch was that the tarmac seemed to go on forever in every direction and that corners came at you out of nowhere. I was worried that I would low-side in the very first bend. I needn’t have worried.
The fact is, the track was very easy to read. Coloured rumble strips on the apexes of all the corners made the edges of the track easy to spot, and after a couple of sighting laps I was already winding the engine up to the limiter and leaning more, all while looking for overtaking opportunities past slower riders. Everything I’d learned at Thruxton came back to me, with braking and turn-in points easy to figure out after a few corners. The trick, just as then, was to start slow and build speed gently over time.
I tracked down one of the instructors on offer at the end of the second session, and requested some pointers. When I lined up for the third time he told me to follow him for the first three laps, after which he would beckon me to overtake and then follow for the rest of the session. His lines through the corners weren’t drastically different to mine, but there was definitely room for fine-tuning.
I caught up with the instructor afterwards and he advised me that I wasn’t hanging off the bike enough, wasn’t taking the faster corners tight enough, and wasn’t using the whole of the track on corner exit, demonstrating that there was far more speed to be had there. I was also losing time by braking too late at the end of the long straight, and therefore making a mess of the corner entry and putting myself on too-wide a line for Gerard’s. While I was already faster than most of my group through the corners, the vast majority of riders were on faster, more powerful bikes and I had my work cut out trying to overtake on the straights.
My instructor pointed out that overtaking on corners was fine as long as I was giving the bikes in front enough room. With a wide track and no oncoming traffic to worry about, I was able to start picking bikes off in the bends, even passing a couple on the inside who took overly wide lines through the hairpin. It turns out all that Alpine practice had paid off!
While timing equipment was officially banned, I’d sneakily left my smartphone running a data recorder throughout the day, so that I could confirm that I was indeed improving session by session. Sure enough, laptimes were slowly dropping as lean angles increased, and only started to climb again when I began pushing myself to go fast, rather than focusing on riding smoothly in some of the later sessions. Thanks to this telemetry I was able to check myself and return to working on my technique. Go smooth to go fast!
As the final sessions approached, I began to notice worrying behaviour from some of my fellow riders. While I myself wasn’t particularly fatigued, due to many years of conditioning from 400-mile touring days, other riders were exhibiting symptoms of overconfidence or reduced concentration. Twice I had people try to outbrake me into the S-bends and then aim for the escape route instead. After having seen what can happen when two riders collided earlier in the day, I decided to pass on the very last session. Unlike many of these race-fairing equipped hotshots, I needed my bike to get home…
The final question was this. After a day of 100mph+ speeds and 45-degree lean angles, would I find returning to public roads and the constraints of the highway code irritating, or even impossible? Many of those I spoke to at the track no longer rode motorcycles on the roads, and some of the younger ones didn’t even have bike licenses. I’d heard about people finding traffic and other hazards too much to deal with after the relative calm and safety of the racetrack. I’m please to say that I thoroughly enjoyed my ride home, and found the speed limits no more onerous than usual.
In truth, while I learned more about myself and my bike from the TVAM Road Skills Day, riding around Mallory Park was tremendous fun and an education to boot. I’ve still got plenty more to work on (I never did get my knee down!) and I’ve confirmed once and for all that the limit isn’t my bike, it’s very definitely still me.
Would I do it again? You bet I would. I’m already booked in at Donnington Park…
Nick Tasker
First published in Slipstream October 2018