Features Preparing to Enter the Racing World

So here I am, now fully decided that I will be racing a full-ish season in 2010 with God’s Grace. Racing in the rookie 600 Open class (which, in a nutshell is a class where everyone is on 600cc Supersports motorbikes such Yamaha R6, Suzuki GSXR’s, Kawasaki Ninjas, etc) and everyone is in their first season of racing.

Having missed the inaugural round at Brands Hatch, as at that stage I didn’t think I would be racing this year. However, after being at the first race and knowing that I would be at more or less all the rounds as a spectator, I decided I needed to get involved.

My entry into the racing world.

So now it was time for a track device. I had started buying bits for my road bike to make it track friendly, such as track fairing and spare wheels, but I wanted to be in the 600 class and I had made a few friends in that class already. In order to keep the bank manager happy, it was time to look for a cheap track/race bike (preferably with spares) for £2000-£3000. Or, in other words, as cheap as humanly possible.

At that point, I hadn’t ridden competitively before. With just two track days under my belt, I still didn’t know how my pace would fare up against the other riders on the grid, so I didn’t want to put too much into it and find out I’m slower than Miss Micra.

After a week or two of searching, I found a nice Suzuki GSXR 600 K4 that was already ready to race and, with a few essentials, spare wheels and spares, all for £2250. It also made sense to buy a van as hire fee’s were so expensive for regular use, with me eventually finding one for a reasonable £595.

Me on the Suzuki K4 GSXR testing at Snetterton.

Testing

The next round was at Snetterton. lucky for me, this was where I had my second track day, so I at least had a feel for the circuit. Taking the new race bike, there for a bit of a shakedown before the race weekend to make sure it ran okay. It was a good thing I did, as it had warped discs on the dry wheels and it took the whole day of testing to find the cause and sort it out.

Finally, with that all sorted, I managed a decent final session at the end of the day, improving my times from the 1:30 region up to 1:25’s. I was happy with this, as I thought this would put me in the mid-pack (going on last year’s race times) and I knew I had room to make up a few seconds.

I also found out that my bike was slower down the straights then Jason’s, but I managed to claw back some ground on the corners, so I wasn’t too fussed. All I had to do now was sort out another set of discs and some decent rubber for my first race weekend the following week.

Stay Tuned….

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