Trackdays

The 501 got its first track outing at Crail raceway in Scotland. Crail has a variety of track layouts depending on how many people are riding, but we stuck to the smaller twistier track. As it's an old disused airfield there are plenty of old buildings littered around the place like in the photo below. It's mixed surface and the dirt sections were slick mud, it was difficult to get any drive through them at all but it made the day more interesting. It was yet another top day organised by mates of mine over at www.superbmotard.co.uk and I can't recommend em highly enough. As well as a couple of flat-ish dirt sections there was also an elevated dirt run with a jump onto and off of it. Not the best conditions, but then again it is in Scotland! I left the gearing as stock and never had any problem, it seems to be geared for about 95-100 which is pretty short, so for any twisty track it's ideal. If I was to tackle a sportsbike track like Oulton or Cadwell I'd be tempted to gear it taller to avoid holding it flat out on the longer straights, because I'm paranoid about it going bang.

Crail

Trackday bodywork in place...

Blagged a go on a mate's KTM 660

Errr...got a bit of cleaning to do here I reckon!

Rowrah Kart Track

Well I hadn't been back from honeymoon long and my wife suggested I get another trackday booked - howzat eh!! So I hooked up with superbmotard.co.uk again and decided to have a crack at Rowrah. It's a Kart track (twisty!!!) up in the Lake District, and is built within a sort of natural quarry. Amongst the guys there were such riders as Andy Mitchell (UK Husaberg team rider), Keith Needham and plenty of other top notch riders. It was good to share tracktime with riders of this calibre, and it was even more of a pleasure because the amount of track manners in abundance. No-one got cut up, punted off or whatever and when you consider there was a mix of top-10 UK riders at one end of the spectrum, nobbers like me with lights and number plates at the other, and everyone inbetween that's pretty impressive. No egos on display, just everyone having fun like it should be.

Again, at Rowrah the weather can be a problem. Fortunately after a couple of hours the showers stopped and the track started to dry out. By the end of the day it was grippy enough to get the peg sliders down which is quite a long way on a motard.

Second time at Rowrah

I had another crack at Rowrah in late November, again the weather was dodgy and it was bloody cold, as you can see I ended up wearing my old touring jacket over me leathers. I learnt a lot that particular day as I got towed along by some quicker riders and managed to up the pace a few times. By the end of the day I was sticking with people who'd previously been much quicker than me. The beringer setup proved fantastic, you could do 20 laps easily and the brakes remained consistent throughout. The Maxxis Goldspeeds are also worth a mention, good on the dirt yet as grippy as any road tyre, they've lasted 800 miles on the road and 3 trackdays so far which is good enough for me.