AFM 103 – Greg McCullough

First time at Buttonwillow.  Kevin and I drove down last night and stayed at the Willow Suites.  I missed it this morning, but apparently there was a cockroach wandering around the bathroom when Kevin used it.  Gotta love this place.

Anyway, the day was pretty productive and a ton of fun.  The A group was pretty sparse… with maybe 12 people total, mostly instructors with ZoomZoom having fun while not coaching the B & C groups, plus a few racers.  It took us the first half of the day to get a rough grasp on which gears to be in for which turns, apex points, etc.  I’m glad to find the process of breaking down a track is getting easier though.

ZoomZoom didn’t have a laptimer beacon out there, so I have no idea what kind of laptimes I was actually running.  This probably wasn’t a bad thing, since it let me focus on being smooth and not worry about going fast.  Chasing a few of the fast guys out there on faster bikes, with no pressure, was probably the best way to spend a first day at a new track.  Speed is a derivative of doing a lot of small things right, consistently, and I figured out a whole bunch of those things today.

Oliver Rowen, another 2007 novice racer on an SV650, was there learning Buttonwillow for the first time as well.  He’s definitely the fastest novice I’ve run across so far, and looks to be the top competition in the lightweight novice clubman races this year.

Kevin and I ran 2 practice race starts at the end of the day, piggybacking on the new racer’s school ZoomZoom was putting on.  I was a little overeager the first time, getting the front tire a foot and a half in the air.  The second was much better, but could have been faster.  I’m going to need to find a creative way to practice my race starts, as regular track days don’t have standing starts, and my bike’s not street legal.

The new generator was a lifesaver, as my battery has just about had it, not storing much charge at all.  I had to leave it on the charger every off-session, but with the super low noise on this thing, it was no big deal at all.

I need to get back to Buttonwillow for a 2-day stint before the AFM weekend though.  The are some areas I really want to focus on, and clip a few more seconds off.