Here's my review of the STAR school that I attended last week. If you think the review is long and don't want to read that much, here are the cliff notes. I gained a lot out of the class but feel I need to go to at least a few open trackdays just to practice and internalize what I've learned.
atek3
So I went to to Thunderhill april 4th and 5th for Jason Pridmore's Star School. I got my money's worth.
Tuesday it rained most of the day, I've ridden probably one or two thousand miles in the rain but i've never tried cornering vigorously. By the end of the day however I was pretty comfortable with how hard I could brake or get on the gas without having traction issues.
Wednesday was much nicer. I started off in the street group but as the track dried up and my confidence and skills improved one of the instructors moved me up to the advanced group. It was nice because I didn't have to worry about other riders, I could just focus on the areas I need improvement on.
One of the coolest parts of the school was riding two-up with Jason Pridmore on the back of his GSXR1000. Whoa, I mean seriously Whoa. He was going faster than I went all day with 190 lbs of ballast on the back of his bike. It started sprinkling so he took it very easy, which was still faster than I ever went!
Another total trip was standing near turn 7-8 and watching pridmore fly by on his gsxr... Pridmore is fast... practically mindbogglingly fast. Then we watched him go through 14-15. His back end became pretty loose going through so many downshifts so quickly off the back straight.
I learned a lot of valuable lessons.
Weight on the bars is my enemy, especially in turn two. In turn two I hit a couple spots of wet pavement that shouldn't have upset the bike but with so much weight on the bars the front end momentarily lost traction in a most unpleasant fashion.
Unlike my first track day where I pushed and pushed and pushed until I binned it in the last session this time I listened to the little voice in my head that told me when to take a brake, take it easy, or just hang out in the hot pits with an instructor before heading back out. I don't think I spent an entire lap the entire day going "balls out". Most of the time I took it easy setting up for my turns. Turn 14 was my nemesis on my first track day last july, I ran off there three times. This time I braked earlier leaving enough extra room that if I thought my entry speed was still too much I had time to scrub some speed before leaning the bike in.
I found that if I "hang off" I'm basically hanging off the bars which disturbs the chassis over bumps, the pridmore instructors (mainly James Lickwar) told me to instead "pivot" around the tank so I can hold my upper torso up with my legs and abs. My body position still isn't perfect. Once I was going through turn 6 and I tried using too much lean angle and I scraped my aftermarket rigid peg... a definate no no. I'm still not positive if this is a ground clearance issue, a lines issue, or a body position issue.
Looking further ahead was a big challenge at first. I was staring at the patch of pavement 20 ft in front of me... at speed. This was dumb for a few reasons. The most important I found was that at those speeds I was basically commited to the next 20 ft, so looking at imperfections and water merely gave me 250 ms to tense up before hitting sketchy pavement...the exact opposite response that the bike wants. After working with a few instructors I started to take my chin up always looking for exit markers of the turn or if there were no exit markets just the opposite side of the track after the turn. By doing so it felt like I was going slower, so I could go faster without 'freaking out'.
I learned clutchless upshifting in the straights. I understood how to do it intuitively but the classroom explaination taught me how to do it physically, now my clutchless upshifts are pretty smooth.
Pridmore has an interesting way of downshifting that doesn't use blipping. I'm still experimenting with that but my muscle memory still has me trained to blip, more work is needed in this area.
More later. I'd like to thank James, Jason, JJ and the rest of the instructors at the STAR school.
Guy who lowsided in front of me at turn 8, I hope you are okay and uninjured.
thanks,
atek3
The guy that lowsided at 110 mph was miraculously okay, despite tumbling and flipping.
