Dragging Knee and Karting Around: Part I

I finally had time to sit down and extrude my thoughts from this last weekend. I only had one full day of Motorbike related activity, but it was such an intensive day of fun that I ended up needing to break it up into two posts of content.

Welcome to Part I, Sportbiking Dirt Bikes. 

I had been looking for a way to do a track day or get some kind of track time to test out the Ninja. Everywhere I looked I was met by dates that interfered with work or home life. Last Friday I graduated the class that I was running finally freeing up some time in my ever compressed schedule. The best I could do before my summer got booked up again was another day at Socal Supermoto. This time I would be doing their Asphalt Only Supermoto (formerly known as Sport Bike Fundamentals) class. I will save the report of getting the Ninja to the track for Part II. For now I'll cover what I learned, and boy I learned plenty.

Our classroom for the day. The guy with the white trucker cap is our instructor for the day, Stuart Smith. Stuman has been riding, racing and teaching for quite some time. I will most likely run into him again as he is one of the New Racer School instructors at Chuckwalla, a track I want to ride someday. 

This class focusses on teaching things like turn in points and hitting the corner apex in the controlled environment of Adams Raceway Park kart track. I took the Supermoto class here about a year ago and learned a great deal while having boat loads of fun doing it. I was excited to be back and to focus on getting fast while dragging a knee.

The fleet of bikes for the day, Suzuki DRZ 400s in full supermoto trim. Last year these bikes were a bit worked over. This year they were even more so. My class didn't help as there were spills a plenty. I was the first to low side straight out of the gate on the first round. I dumped it in the pit lane exit hair pin that was my nemesis last time. Cloudy overcast days mean the track is cold and so are the tires. I got overconfident from my previous experience at the track. Within the first lap I remembered my gearing, shift, and braking points for each corner from last time. I pushed the turn too hard and dumped the bike. Seeing as how there is a two strike rule, I slowed things down for the next couple of runs to keep things rubber side down for the rest of the day.

Here I am towards the end of the day. We worked on the main lessons before lunch. The later part of the day was spent refining and linking those lessons together. This is the large banked turn at the end of the back straight for anyone that has been to Adams. It is a double apex, banked turn that exits into a left, right, left chicane. I was able to get my body position and head turned better into this part of the track as compared to the other sectors. From the lessons we covered I finally got the hang of corner apexes and a much better understanding of the timing between shifting, braking, turn in and acceleration through the corners. I will need to practice much, much more to get it all locked into place.

Here I am looking fast and having a blast! Stuman was also our track photographer later in the day. I'd like to say I was immune to trying to look good for the lens, but I would be lying. I did hit some of my best corners for the day when he was aiming the camera at me. I also dorked up some other sections of the track celebrating too early. Trying to get a full sport bike hang off the DRZs was really tough. You have to really get high on the tank to keep the weight on the front tire. This makes it hard for me to get my knee and arm position correct. Speaking of tires, I noticed that I was getting some heat into the Dunlops that they use at Socal Supermoto. There were some rubber boogers starting to form on the tires which made me feel good despite being the slowest guy of the 10 of us in the class.

I wasn't the only one to go down during the class. There were plenty of drops throughout the day. When you stick 10 guys on supermotos on a kart track and tell them to go fast, you end up with limits being pushed. I threw on my GoPro for the last couple of sessions and caught a classmate named Tony washing out before the back straight. I remember thinking just before he hit the deck that I wish I could get low down through the corners like his knee dragging style he displayed during the day. He didn't have any problems with body position on the big thumpers like I did.

Well that is Part I. I had a great time and even got another T-shirt out of the deal. I finally got the information I need to get the Ninja out on the track at Adams and will be back there with my own bike I'm sure. Stay tuned for another post where I talk about getting the Ninja out to Adams for the class and on the track for the first time. See ya!

Blue